My Big Girl Potty*TM Review

This week's review is going to take an in depth look at My Big Girl Potty*tm by Baby Stella*tm .... Er, no by somebody... by.... Who the hell is this book by? There is no author anywhere on the outside cover, inside cover, or listed on the Amazon listing for the book! On Amazon, it says "by Manhattan" which stands for "Manhattan Toys." That is the company that makes the Baby Stella doll and accessories including a toy called "Playtime Potty." Coincidence? Not a chance. There is no author for this book because no one person wrote it. It was written by a corporation with the sole purpose of selling more Baby Stella accessories! Don't believe it? Just keep reading.

The setting: A house (and bathroom)

The characters: Baby Stella*tm, Playtime Potty*tm, Baby Stella Rocking Horse*tm, Lullaby Wooden Cradle*tm, and about a dozen wardrobe changes

Aside from the uber-creepy looking personified version of the Baby Stella doll in this book and the fact that it was clearly written by somebody that has never written a book in their life, this book is a horrible product placement ad passed off as a children's book. It is pretty sad because the actual Baby Stella doll is actually really cute. It is the only completely plush doll on the market, and the doll available in stores doesn't have the same dead eyes that Baby Stella has in the book.

On the first page of this book, you can see that Baby Stella (available at Amazon for $24.25) is playing with her rocking horse (available from Amazon for $27.95) and her little toy bunny (available in the Snuggle Sleep Sack for Baby Stella at Amazon for $16.72.) Baby Stella is ready to learn to use the potty because she doesn't want to wear diapers anymore. She goes to use her brand new potty, which happens to be the playtime potty (available at Amazon for $15.38.)

Baby Stella then has an accident when sitting near her Lullaby Wooden Cradle (available at Amazon for $34.99), which is currently holding her Cuddle Time Sleeper Bear (available at Amazon with her sleeping set for $15.08 or you can get the bear, outfit, and cradle as part of the Baby Stella Sweet Dreams set at Amazon for $50.00 saving 7 cents) and promptly changes into her Pretty Party Outfit (available at Amazon for $15.72) before trying to use the potty again.

Eventually, Baby Stella is able to use the potty without having an accident! Afterwards, she washes her hands at the request of the narrator. She then forever throws out her diapers (available in the Baby Stella Darling Diaper bag at Amazon for $21.14) and changes into "big girl underwear" (available as part of the Baby Stella potty training set from Amazon for $13.12.) 

In summation, this "book," if you really want to call it that, is short, poorly written, and features no less than 8 different Baby Stella products. If you want your son or daughter to initiate a real world recreation of this book using the real Baby Stella products, you'd better have your charge card ready because it will cost you a whopping $195.76. That is not a typo, and it assumes that you are also purchasing the book (available from Amazon for $11.48.) However, despite all of the above, Lily loves this book even though it "lived" under the couch for about a month. She gives it 5 out of 5 stars. Mortgage your house and pick up this book and all Baby Stella accessories as soon as possible! I did!

Bear Feels Sick Review

This week, I'll be reviewing Bear Feels Sick by Karma Wilson and illustrated by Jane Chapman. Is it extremely important to remember who is the illustrator of this book. The Bear series of books are very well written and well thought out children's books, but they suffer from a unique issue. The layout of the book is controlled by the ego-maniacal and self-flagellating children's book illustrator Jane Chapman, who is likely nothing more than an art school dropout recruited by a very talented author to add pictures to a previously written story. Are the pictures good? I suppose, but my God, there are like 400 pages to a children's book!

The setting: Bear's soon to be quarantined cave in the autumn

The characters: Bear, his friends, and an illustrator who somehow manages to become part of the story

This book starts out on page 10 because the first 5 pages are drawings of a giant forest with bear in a cave. After that, there are 3 pages more of drawings of Bear and his friends on the title page of the book. After that, and I'm actually serious about this, the very first page after the title page HAS NO WORDS ON IT! There is another picture! I get it... You want the readers to visualize what is going on! Just tell the story already! I imagine that the illustrator of this book either got paid by the page or worked out a deal where she gets to draw as many pictures as she can and the editor has to figure out how to show every page. Brutal.

First page after title page

We are quickly introduced (on page 10) to bear who is sick. His symptoms include a snuffed up nose, achiness, and insomnia. We also find out that bear suffers from wheezing and a fever. From those symptoms, we are able to infer that bear has the flu, and we should take appropriate precautions to prevent spreading the illness. However, his friends come sauntering in and tell bear that they will take care of him. They divvy up responsibilities and begin to help bear feel better. Some of his friends are naturopaths, and they gather herbs to use in a tea. Some of his friends start cooking something (although it does not become clear what they are cooking). The story develops slowly as we have to turn the page every few sentences because there are SO MANY pictures like below.

Really, there is 1 sentence on these 2 pages! You do not need to draw a picture for every single line of text. We really don't need to SEE what it looks like when mouse is sneezing and hare is wheezing. We can imagine it! However, in Bear Feels Sick, no imagination is needed because EVERY SINGLE action described in the story has a corresponding picture. Need to know what bear looks like when they put a blanket on him? They got that covered. Need to see the friends cooking and caring? Taken care of! Need to know what bear looks like when he gets better? We have FOUR pages of that!!

In the climax of the book, when his friends exclaim, "we've done all we could," bear's fate becomes slightly murky and you begin to wonder if bear may die this flu season. However, bear ultimately survives, despite his friend's deep concern for his well-being. It seems his friends make crappy doctors by not taking the necessary precautions to prevent themselves from becoming sick. Once bear makes a miraculous recovery, waking up feeling "like new," we discover that his friends are now sick! Normally, I would have made sure to give the readers of this review a spoiler alert. Unfortunately, in Bear Feels Sick, they have spoiled the ENTIRE STORY already on the back cover of the book! The entire story including the very end of the book is summarized on the back cover! What's up with that?

In summation, Bear Feels Sick is a 3 page story stretched out over 100 pages by a pencil wielding narcissist that hijacks an otherwise cute story. Since Lily thoroughly enjoys flipping pages and because she enjoys the anticipation of repeating phrases like "and the bear feels sick," she gives this book 5 out of 5 stars! Bear Feels Sick is available at Amazon for $13.00, which is a steal for a book that probably took Jane Chapman 3 years to illustrate. Pick up your copy today and use it as an example of why your kids have to wash their hands after being in public and shouldn't play with wild animals. The bubon lurks behind every corner! Happy reading!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Review

Today's review will be Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault. How it took two people to write a book about the alphabet is beyond comprehension, but that is not even the worst part of this book. The actual writing of this book is atrocious, and the story-line just doesn't make any sense. What on earth does Chicka Chicka Boom Boom even mean, anyway? Am I supposed to understand what that means? I feel like I just walked into a movie halfway through it.

The setting: A coconut tree (And if you can please explain to me what coconut trees have to do with the alphabet, you win a prize.)

The characters: The entire alphabet, a coconut tree, the sun, a full moon, the alphabet's parents, uncles, and aunts, and seriously, I have no idea what is going on in this book!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom begins at the first letter of the alphabet, thank God! That is the only thing that Bill and John actually did that makes any sense in this book. "A told B and B told C, "I'll beat you to the top of the coconut tree."" That seems very logical. Letters running up a random coconut tree sitting in the middle of a giant white space. Okay, I'll suspend my disbelief here for a moment because this is a children's book. I'll allow that premise... now wow me with awesome writing.

Stop. You can't end every line with "up the coconut tree." It is pointless repetition and doesn't actually rhyme. However, "tree" rhymes with just about every single word in the English or Spanish language. "Look who's coming! L M N O P! And Q R S! And T U V!" Wait... you just blew through half the alphabet without anything happening! A and B were talking and K was "tag-along K." Throw something good at us here. If I wanted to just read a string of letters I would READ THE ALPHABET! Oh, the whole alphabet is up the coconut tree, now.... wait! Oh, you fooled me! Bill, you are so tricky.

BOOM! BOOM! Make sure you have all caps there, or it doesn't have the same effect. I'm guessing that the "BOOM! BOOM!" part has to do with the alphabet falling out of the tree. However, what does "Chicka, Chicka..." mean? Is that the sound that coconuts make? Is this an alphabet porno? I am looking forward to the end of this book explaining everything.

Now all the letters are in a giant pile and various things are happening to them as a result of the fall. D skinned his knee and G is out of breath. K is about to cry. P has a black eye and Q, R, S are completely unharmed. Really? Bill and John, with your two brilliant minds, couldn't come up with something for Q R S? Embarrassing. X Y Z are all unharmed, too, but now the sun goes down on the coconut tree.... so is the story over? No, there's a full moon! Ya know, that tree doesn't exactly look very steady. Whose bright idea was it to go up this coconut tree in the first place? 

DAMN YOU A! Stay out of that coconut tree! Get back in bed! Of course, it ends with one last "Chicka chicka BOOM! BOOM!" just for fun.

In summation, letters climb a tree and then fall out. The coconuts have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with anything that happened. This could just have easily been a banana tree or a pine tree. However, for some unknown reason, kids seem to really like this book. Lily carries it around the house asking for me to read it again and again. Sometimes I have to hide it because it is insufferable, but Lily gives this book 5 out of 5 stars. It is available at Amazon for $13.11 and is free shipping for Amazon Prime customers. Unfortunately, there is no teacher's guide version of this book, so you'll have to answer the unanswerable questions yourself. Pick this book up today... Chicka, Chicka, BOOM! BOOM!

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!