Review Detail

The cover, the illustrations, and the way the art draws the reader from page to page are definitely the selling points of this book. My four year old was immediately captivated by the artwork. It's colorful and playful in keeping with the tone of the story.

The story itself, however, struggled to keep her interest. The underlying message of a bully getting into trouble and needing help from those he's bullied (and turning out to be simply jealous and sad) is a familiar one for this age group, and is definitely necessary. The message itself gets a bit lost in the middle of the book when the narrative moves from using words very familiar with the preschool age group into words more suitable for upper elementary and middle school vocabularies. There's value in including a few unfamiliar words within a context that can be understood by preschoolers. That's how vocabularies are built, and I love that. But for some reason, this time the frequent unfamiliar words kept pulling my daughter out of the story. I stopped to define them for her, but by the end of the book, she wanted to read something else.

I think this book will be a huge hit with a slightly older "young" reader--maybe six to eight-year-olds. All in all, it's a gorgeous book with a story built for young readers with a large vocabulary base and decent attention span.