Children's Books, and Other Cool Stuff

  Author Spotlight July 2021 Book Review- “ The Fastest Dinosaur .” Overall, this book by Mrs. Caren Cantrell tries to work with a simple concept of a dinosaur who is in a race for being the fastest runner out of his friends. Yet, at the same time he has a large heart and wants to help everyone. So, when he is challenged by another dinosaur to a race, he accepts this challenge and as he races, he comes to situations where he is asked to help others. The illustrations by Mrs. Amy Klein use simple colors and shapes to represent the characters really well. The one issue I found with this book is that it seemed not to tell the full story bringing in many characters that we knew nothing about. The characters even the main one, Enzo were very genetic and not realistic. It also lacked a story arc where a character has to grow in some way. I am not sure what the target age of this book is or what message it was trying to send it’s readers? It could definitely have used some more work and ...

  Author Spotlight 2021 Book Review “Ishkabibble unafraid”- I read this book and overall found it was an interesting idea and a good play on the famous saying that kids are told “That monsters live in their closets or under the bed.”   That concept made this book surprising and rather interesting. The illustration by Jack Foster were incredibly good and used simple colors and shapes to bring the main character to life. Yet. I found that the book had several forced rhymes and might be confusing for some children. It also lacked what we call a story arc where the main character goes through a full circle and grows in some way. In general, this book could be fun read, but it certainly needs some development and clarity. Also, many picture books I have read while working as a free-lance book reviewer for Scholastic for two years were not written with moral lessons but written to be just fun stories.   I would give this one three stars.        ...