Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack Review

Welcome to the first post of my brand new blog! Throughout the entirety of my educational experiences in high school and college, I was routinely reminded of the set rules of the English language... rules that don't seem to apply to children's book authors. Themes, story cohesion, grammar, spelling, and character development are just some of the areas that children's book authors have turned their backs on while trying to entertain our nation's youth.... but why? Is it possible that children write so poorly because the books that they read are written so poorly? Is there a direct correlation between laziness in our classroom and laziness on our book shelf? In my time as a father, I have learned a lot about children's books. You might even say that I am the foremost expert on the genre of children's literature having read over a million books to my daughter.... each one read completely upside down! Join me as I ponder the mysteries of the mind of the children's book author!

The first book that I will review is by author Doreen Cronin. The title is Click,Clack, Quackity-Quack: An Alphabetical Adventure and is set in the same universe as some of her other books like Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type and Duck For President. As you can see by the cover, Duck is also in this book. Moreover, looking at the cover, you can tell that Doreen just loves punctuation. There are 2 unnecessary commas and a hyphen in the title of the book! Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. In fact, Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack may be the sole reason that your kids write run-on sentences for the REST OF THEIR LIVES! You'll see why.

The setting: a parallel reality where animals can use type writers, carry tiny mouse-sized umbrellas, and go on picnics

The characters: Duck, other farm animals, other animals that do not live on farms but are needed in order to fit certain letters in the alphabet, and the suffix "ty"

This book starts out very strong! "Animals awake," but it's all downhill from there.... "Beneath blue blankets?" Why are the animals all under blankets? Is it cold? Are they hiding from someone? Why are the blankets blue? Do they symbolize something? Moreover, why does the first letter have one format and then the next letter has a different format? 2 words for "A" but 3 words for "B" and then back to 2 words for "C." However, on the first page, we get the first glimpse into the character development of the suffix "ty!" 

On the next page, duck is "dashing" with a piece of paper presumably that the cows had typed on. Foreshadowing alert! Also, we start to see the lack of grammatical sense as "Duck dashing, eggs emptying." is NOT A SENTENCE. Then the suffix "ty" rears its ugly head once again with the letter "F." We breeze through "G" and "H" but with "I", "inchworms inching" followed by "jumpity jump" is just pathetic. Got a lot of inchworms on the farm there, do we?

The next several pages continue the decimation of the English language, but Doreen's masterful use of words really comes alive when we get to the letter "R" as "Rain raining, sheep sleeping." Two points... first, that is not a sentence. Second, I cannot imagine a set of circumstances under which "rain" does not rain. If rain stopped raining, it wouldn't actually be rain any longer. It'd just be clouds and puddles.

Finally, the excitement ramps up in the last few pages of this "adventure" that we've embarked on when we get to see the point of all these seemingly random pseudo-sentences. 

Oh, they're having a picnic. Wait a second... isn't that the paper that duck was carrying from the typewriter earlier? How the hell do you type a giant "X" on a piece of paper? Also, wasn't it just raining like two seconds ago on sleeping sheep? Why was only one pig peaking? It was just a cart of watermelons. Also, how do you have a picnic with just watermelons!?!?!? ***Spoiler Alert*** The story ends with all the animals sleeping and using the letter "Z" to exclaim "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz." which also ends with a period and is not a sentence in any language.

In summation, Click,Clack, Quackity-Quack: An Alphabetical Adventure is a giant cluster of plot holes, grammatical errors, and poor imagination. In fact, I think Doreen wrote this book in about 5 minutes and her editor just sent it to the printer without looking at it. However, since this appears to be one of my daughter's favorite books, she gave this book 5 out of 5 stars! You can purchase it on Amazon for $13.23 and it even comes with a keyboard that makes sound (I don't have that version, thank God.) If you have kids, this is the perfect way to have them sit quietly for about 30 seconds, so make sure to pick up your copy today! Happy reading!