Review: The Truly Terrible Horrible Sweater...That Grandma Knit by Debbie Macomber and Mary Lou Carney

Title: The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater...That Grandma Knit
Written by: Debbie Macomber and Mary Lou Carney
Illustrated by: Vincent Nguyen
Format: Hardcover
Published by: HarperCollins Children's Books
ISBN: 978-006165093-2
This Edition Published: 2009
Suggested Retail Price: US $16.99/Canada $22.50
Approximate Reading Time: 8 minutes


Summary
"The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater...that Grandma Knit" about a little boy named Cameron who receives a hand knit sweater from his grandmother for his birthday.   Cameron thinks his grandmother is wonderful but he despises the sweater.  He thinks it is the ugliest thing ever.  From the moment he lays eyes on it, Cameron tries to come up with a way to get rid of the sweater.  He puts it on the dog, sneaks it into a rummage sale and spreads condiments all over it.  He is repeatedly thwarted in his efforts and before long, it is the Christmas season and Grandma is coming to visit.  Cameron's mother suggests that he wear the sweater to the train station to pick his grandmother up and Cameron grudgingly obliges. Once his grandmother arrives, she tells him about why she chose the colours in his sweater, green to remind her of the grass at his soccer field, blue because of his blue bike, etc. Upon hearing about her choices and reflecting on the time and love she put into it, Cameron decides that he is proud of the sweater and intends to wear it for a long time. At the end of the book there are "How to Knit" instructions plus a pattern for a sweater like Cameron's. 


Review
As soon as we finished reading this book, both of my girls asked me for sweaters just like Cameron's.  They seemed to appreciate the idea that Cameron's grandmother had spent a lot of her time and energy to custom make a present for him.  They liked how she thought happy thoughts of him as she knit it and they understood that such a thing would be special. 


I think this book is a good one for any child who had received a hand made present and not seen it for the special thing it is.  Hand made presents should hold a place of honour among presents because they are usually made with love, take oodles of time and are only given to choice people.  Most adults know this, but many a child has to be taught that the things people make or put a lot of time and love into deserve special recognition and special treatment. 

This book is also good for helping kids to understand that often, hand made things can be received with joy.  They can pack all their love and respect for a special person into something they make themselves and those presents are just as special (or more special) than things bought at the store. 

The illustrations in this book are bright and lively and can keep the attention of little kids.  The story itself is nicely written and we can feel Cameron's frustrations at not being able to rid himself of the sweater, and later, his grandmother simply oozes with love for that kid and so it isn't hard for the kids to see how special the sweater is.  The story is rather lengthy and although this was no a problem for a 4 and 5-year-olds, I probably wouldn't recommend it for kids under three as they may find it a bit long. 

Newsflash
Summer is upon us and we will be spending the next few weeks going to lots of fun places and doing lots of fun things.  I will still post a weekly book review but I can't promise they will be up and ready on Monday mornings for the next little while.  Check back often for updates or subscribe to Tadpole Tale's feed so you don't miss anything.   

Available Online:
Chapters.indigo.ca
See The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater...that Grandma Knit at amazon.ca
See The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater...That Grandma Knit at amazon.com
See The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater...That Grandma Knit at Barnes&Noble.com

Review: Remy the Rhino Learns Patience by Andy McGuire

Title: Remy the Rhino Learns Patience
Written and Illustrated by: Andy McGuire
Format: Hardcover
Published by: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 978-07369-2773-4
This Edition Published: 2010
Suggested Retail Price: US $16.99/Canada $12.99
Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes

Summary

"Remy the Rhino Learns Patience" is the story of a very short-tempered rhinoceros who charges and yells at other animals who bother him.  Nobody is safe from the wrath of Remy.  One day, an aardvark trips over Remy's toes while he naps.  Instead of running as Remy begins to charge, she waits till the last moment, jumps out of the way and causes Remy's horn to get his horn stuck in the trunk of a tree.  This situation makes him extremely angry but the aardvark has a solution: she will get her termite friends to eat around Remy's horn till he's free.  But, Remy has to stay quiet and still while they work or else they will get scared and it will take longer for him to get out.  So, as the termites slowly eat away at the tree, Remy is forced to endure all sorts of indignities including leopard graffiti and being perched upon by birds.  By the time he is freed, Remy has learned how to relax.   


Review

From time to time, we all need a lesson in patience.  This is a wonderful story to read aloud when someone in the family (maybe even mommy or daddy) is feeling a little short-tempered. 

For the first half of the book, Remy is angry and impatient and just downright rude.  Andy McGuire does an incredible job of making his audience understand Remy and his temper in a mere 8 pages of text and illustration.  By the time the aardvark arrives on the scene, we were all pretty concerned for his welfare. 

As Remy waits to be freed by the termites, several quite funny scenarios are pictured and they serve to both entertain (the girls loved the picture of the leopard drawing pictures on Remy's hide) and help the reader understand that Remy had to stand there and be quiet and calm for a long, long, long, LONG time.  The illustration on the final page shows the rhino grazing with a couple of zebras (who he charged at the beginning) and we close the book knowing that life on the savanna will be a lot more peaceful now.    

The illustrations in this book are absolutely gorgeous.  They are soft but detailed and realistic looking while retaining the touch of whimsy that is required to keep the attention of small children.  These drawings made me want to run out and take an art class.

The text in this book rhymes.  I have said before that I love a book with a rhyme and this is no exception.  I know that Daniel (15 months) will listen to an entire book if it has a rhythm but will not get through many pages of a book written in prose.  Jillian (4) will also listen longer if a book rhymes.  For the most part, the rhymes in this book are very good but there are two or three that don't quite match up.  It doesn't deter from the story but I do think you might want to read it to yourself once or twice to get your mind and tongue around how to make "grunted" work with "wanted".  Otherwise, if you are like me, you might do a bit of a double take at those parts and break the spell that the story is casting.  A mild mispronunciation like you have to do in many an Ogden Nash poem will make it work just fine.

I like how this story shows that being impatient can have the opposite effect from the one you were hoping for.  Often times, my kids get impatient because they want things to move along at a faster pace.  Seeing Remy be stuck in a tree for such a long time for such a silly reason, helped them to see what I've been trying to tell them all along, that if you can be calm and patient, things seem to go more smoothly.  And that even if they don't, a calm attitude can make a situation seem a lot less grueling. 

We have read this book frequently since we got it and I suspect we will be reading it for years to come.  In fact, I have found myself quoting the last little bit of the book when nerves start getting frayed around here.  Only two or three other books have made it onto my list of quotables so this is a grand achievement indeed ("Jillian Jiggs" and "Never Tease a Weasel" are two I love to prattle off whenever I get the chance)!  Do you have any books you know by heart or quote to your kids to remind them of a way to behave (or just because you love it)? 

Available Online:

Chapters.indigo.ca
See Remy the Rhino Learns Patience at amazon.ca
See Remy the Rhino Learns Patience at amazon.com
See Remy the Rhino Learns Patience at barnes&noble.com
                                   

Review: Brain Quest Workbooks

Title: Brain Quest Workbooks
Format: Paperback
Published by: Workman Publishing
ISBN: PK: 978-0761149613
            K: 978-0761149125
            1: 978-0761149149
            2: 978-0761149156
            3: 978-0761149163
            4: 978-0761150183
This Edition Published: 2008
Suggested Retail Price: US $12.95/Canada $16.50


Summary

The Brain Quest workbooks are a series of grade-specific workbooks (pre-kindergarten to grade four).  They are approximately 250 pages long and cover 13 topics including: ABCs and 123s (Pre-K), Patterns and Science (Kindergarten), Phonics and Time and Money (Grade 1), Cursive and Social Studies (Grade 2), Spelling and Vocabulary and Fractions and Decimals (Grade 3) and Geometry and Measurement and Probability and Data (Grade 4). 

Review

Summer is here and the kids are out of school!  Kids love this time of year but I am always mindful of the idea of "summer slide" (when they lose valuable academic skills after three months of fun in the sun).  My kids really like workbooks and have since they were old enough to hold a pencil.  We do them, on and off, all year long but I like them most during the summer months.  Over time, we have tried many, many different types of workbook and our favourites, by far, are the Brain Quest series of workbooks.  So far, my kids have tackled the Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten and Grade 1 books and my opinions are mainly based on those three.

There are a few reasons why I like these best:

• Colour - every single page is rendered in full colour.  It feels a lot less like a worksheet at school when it looks so pretty.  Also, every section of the book is colour coded so jumping from section to section is easy as pie. 
• Perforations - the pages in these books are perforated.  I like this because I can pull out a page, lay it on a hard, flat surface, and let the child complete it.  This way there is no struggling to keep a big book open and no flipping to the next page/section to see what is coming up. 
• Writing lines - I am trained as an occupational therapist and I work with kids with fine motor/printing difficulties and so I am very particular about the size and type of writing lines that are employed in workbooks. As these books progress, the size of the writing lines decrease appropriately.  Until Grade 1, there is a central, dotted line for alignment but they are removed for the Grade 2 book.
• Instructions - Starting in the Grade 1 book, when a child would likely be reading the instructions themselves, the instructions are written in age appropriate language. 
• Engaging - the lessons are punctuated with fun activites like colouring, mazes, word search puzzles and crosswords. 

Personally, my only complaint is that these books are American only.  This usually doesn't matter but in the social studies and money sections, I have had to modify the books for Canadian kids.  This was just a matter of changing the word "state" to "province" and keeping a jar of Canadian currency on hand to cover the pictures of US coins with the equivalent Canadian coins.  The Grade 2 book has a huge section about the states and their capitals and I am not really put off by that.  That book comes with a poster of the United States and I think a child of any nationality could gain valuable skills by having to search a map for a specific place, find our something about it (in this case, its capital) and write it on the line in the book. 

Available Online (these link to the Pre-Kindergarten books but there are links to the others on the pages):
Chapters.indigo.ca
See Brain Quest Workbook at amazon.ca
See Brain Quest Workbook at amazon.com
See Brain Quest Workbook at barnes&noble.com 

Delay

Tadpole Tales will be back on schedule tomorrow.  We hosted a big party for our newly minted four-year-old on the weekend and today was Claire's last day of school.  Time has been in short supply and, I'll admit, my brain feels mushy.  My apologies. 

Summer is fully upon us.  If you have any tips for summer boredom busters or great rainy day activities, how about sharing in the comments?

Review: LMNO Peas by Keith Baker

Title: LMNO Peas
Written and Illustrated by: Keith Baker
Format: Hardcover
Published by: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ISBN: 978-141699141-0
This Edition Published: 2010
Suggested Retail Price: US $16.99/Canada $19.99
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes (but can be much longer if you linger over the illustrations)

Summary

LMNO Peas is an alphabet book with a bit of a twist.  For every letter of the alphabet, there are whole helpings of green peas, demonstrating their various alphabetically appropriate profession or hobby.  Each page features one or two gigantic capital letters with the peas on, over, under or near the letter, doing their thing.  The text of the book is a rhyme, describing what all the peas are doing.  At the end of the book, after they've gone through the entire alphabet, the peas pose the question "Who are you?".

Review

My kids aren't big on vegetables but this book makes them scream "More peas please!".  All three of them were enthralled with this book.  I love a book that can span more than one age group like that!

The alphabet letters in this book are huge and bright and are wonderful for tracing with the finger of a toddler's hand.  Daniel happily let me trace most of them as we went through the book.

The way the peas interact with the letters is intelligent and adorable.  The "miner" pea is tunneling into the M, the the kayaker peas are traveling in their kayaks down the bent line in the letter K and the football field for the quarterback is the little line that makes a Q different from an O. 

Every drawing is extremely detailed and every time I read the book (and I can't seem to stop reading it), I notice something new.  On every two-page spread, a tiny ladybug is hiding and the children found great delight in searching for him.  The range of emotions, wardrobe items and postures the peas have are astounding considering they are tiny green dots with lines for arms and legs. 

The poem is cute, the rhymes aren't forced and the meter works as long as you include the few speech balloons in the poem.  The question at the end of the book makes for a bit of a surprise ending.  We all expected it to get to Z and then be done.  When I read it to Jillian for the first time she looked at the book and announced all three of her names as if expecting it to talk back to her.

In short, we love this book.  I would recommend it to anyone, anytime.  I do hope that it is eventually published in lap-sized board book format.  This is the type of book that a young child might love to have in or near his/her bed to peruse at their leisure.  I have no problem reading a book with regular paper pages to small children but they require close supervision or else you end up with a tattered book.  For baby showers, I always buy the same stack of kid's books for the family and L M N O Peas is going to be the newest addition to that stack!

Available Online:
Chapters.indigo.ca
See LMNO Peas at amazon.ca
See LMNO Peas at amazon.com
See LMNO Peas at Barnes&Noble.com