Tales for Very Picky Eaters by Josh Schneider

Tales for Very Picky Eaters

In this very funny beginning reader, James is a very picky eater.When he won't eat broccoli, his father has some really disgusting and hilarious alternatives like dirt, already been chewed gum and a sock soaked in sweat. When James won't eat mushroom lasagna, his father threatens to fire the troll that lives in their basement and  cooks for them.  The troll will have to go back to the rat circus, where he worked before moving in to work for them.

The saga continues with repulsive milk, lumpy oatmeal and slimy eggs. James's dad offers creative solutions and alternatives in every case. This is a funny book, written in short chapters that can stand alone as separate stories or read together as one. It would be a fun book for new readers to share with their parents, although if they are picky eaters, they may not appreciate the creative insights their parents may gain from James's dad.    2011

R. Rauch

We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems

There is a reason young elementary students (and adults) adore Mo Willems. It's an art to a evoke a stirring emotional truth within the necessary constraints of a beginning reader.

A great beginning reader is as tightly crafted as a perfect poem. It has to be concise, emotionally engaging, have a satisfying plot line, and the language must be simple enough for new readers to decode. The illustrations need to support the text by offering clues to the word meanings, on every page.

Willems' latest, We Are in a Book, delivers humor as well as poignancy in this limited-vocabulary story. The two characters, Elephant and Piggie, become self-conscious when they realize they are characters in this book. At first they feel powerful, but when they consider that all books eventually end, they go through a kind of existential angst. They eventually come up with a solution that the reader can choose to implement, by re-reading the book.

We Are in a Book is the twelfth title in Mo Willems' beginning reader series, "Elephant & Piggie." 2010.

K. Muhm