librarianryan's reviews
6629 reviews

 The best thing I can say about this book is it sounds exactly like one would expect something coming from a Duggar family member to sound. I read this book and know one of the daughters wrote it, but I can hear their mother in my head. Between the lyrical pace, the soft voice. There’s a way where they give the title of a concept like love, do a mini four line poem that rhymes and has a cadence, then a rhyming statement that flows through over half the book. Then you get to the end. Very much about God‘s light and shining and be everything you need to be for Jesus. So I may not have been able to say what sister wrote this, but I would be able to tell you a Dugger wrote it. As for the illustrations, they are fantastic and very diverse. 

 I read this book and I hear Spike Lee in my head. This is a very good thing for a celebrity author. So often celebrity authors sound like they’ve been ghost written. This does not sound that way. Between the repetitiveness and the change up of the “please baby please”  line the other thing that is done well is the simple concepts. The illustrator does a masterful job illustrating the words that show different points in a very busy toddlers day. The illustrations are amazing. I love how the illustrator did the curly hair. I just really liked everything about this book. I think it’s well done. I think it’s entertaining. I think it’s memorable and I think it goes way beyond the celebrity in the author. 

 This book is too long. Massively too long. However, this is more of a second grader book than a storytime book, so the length is understandable. In this our main character, Tony really wants a Pictureface Lizzy, which is a type of smart device. All her friends have one and she really really wants them too. She feels constantly left out. Her parents finally get her a Pictureface Lizzy, and while she does have fun with it, she also learns and gains perspective that you can do more than play with an electronic toy, and that sometimes real life adventures are better than the ones lived online. I like the message in this book. Overall, I like the book. However, it does not sound like Josh Gad. The last line of the book, I’d say Josh wrote that but in general if someone were to blind, read this to me and say select from four creators, I never would’ve picked it to be Josh Gad. 

 Jayme Lee Curtis is at it again. It’s hard to be five celebrates being five years old. Both the things that you can no longer do as well as the things that you get to do now. This is a lovely book just like all her others. This is probably my least favorite of all her books I’ve read so far. The illustrations are always just as perfect as the books are. 

 This book is beautiful. This is a book for a non-biological child. Reiterating that while they may not have been birthed but they were wanted, waited for, and anxious to be met in the world. The illustrations are lovely they go right with the story, and this is sure to be one kids will read and parents will read to their children for years if not generations to come. 

 This book is lovely. It’s simple but it’s well done. It has a definitive pat pattern. It rhymes well and it doesn’t try to be more than it is. The illustrations by Suzie Mason are wonderful and altogether, this is a pleasant work of art that sure to be on Library shelves for you to come. 

 This book is fine. The illustrations are soft and dreamlike and while the story does rhyme and does have a cadence, that cadence is soft in areas. The story’s about how everyone’s different and that is perfectly OK because everyone is who they were made to be. I like the message in this book and overall it works well. But to me it’s only so so. 

 This book is full of nursery rhymes and poems that are very punny. Each word has something that is a pun that may go over kids heads without some explanation. The book was fun, but by the end it you were happy to see the last page. 

 I freely admit this is a DNF at 50%. I just can’t take it anymore. Fantastic frog and amazing Ted Lad are experiments who have been given super strength and the ability to fly but share a brain between the two of them. I don’t like how the book is constantly using putdowns like dumb and stupid. And while I get that this is for kids, it feels like a grown-up talking down to kids instead of actually getting down on kids levels. It’s also overly long. I do think they should have kept this shorter than 200 pages instead of having two or three stories with an intermission, it should have stopped after they finished the first mission. Because after the first mission, I could not go on anymore. I wanted to like this and somebody will. I just don’t know who that is right now. 

 I love these books. They’re sweet. They’re funny. They’re understandable and almost always have a lesson. But the nice thing is the lesson isn’t browbeating the reader. It puts it in a way that kids will get and kids will want to ape. I get excited every time I see there’s a new one so Ben Clayton, please keep them coming.