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Rabbit & Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits by Julian Gough and Jim Field

Source: Media Masters Publicity
Hardcover, 112 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Rabbit & Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits by Julian Gough and Jim Field is an illustrated transition book from beginning readers as move from picture books to chapter books. Bear is a kind animal who is woken up from hibernation, but Rabbit is a disgruntled creature who has some bad habits, like eating his poo.

When the characters are introduced, you expect to see who robbed bear of her food, since the robber supposedly stood on her nose, but the robber seems to vanish in thin air. The illustrations in this story are gorgeous, right down to the wisps of snow falling. Bear calmly handles Rabbit’s cranky retorts and doesn’t even blink at being called “Idiot.” Personally, this household shies away from those words because they are hurtful and can have long-lasting effects, but kids in my daughter’s school and at her age certainly do use that word and others that are far worse. While I don’t like the use of it, I can see how it mirrors a child’s reality on the playground — only here the kids are animals and the playground is the forest.

My daughter reached for this book the moment it entered the house and started reading while eating breakfast. She didn’t eat much before school that morning. She was too absorbed in the story and she easily read the first pages on her own. Because it still has pictures, it helped keep her engaged with the story.

Talk of gravity and digestion, as well as how to build the best snowman, pepper the pages. Kids will learn something while laughing at the antics of these animals, and they’ll be thankful they did as they find Rabbit is later in peril.

Despite a few initial bumps, Rabbit & Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits by Julian Gough and Jim Field ended up being a good story about overcoming initial differences and finding a friendship based on caring and giving.

RATING: Quatrain

Mailbox Monday #518

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha for review in May.

“I live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was IV Corps, which saw many savage fights. Although the battles might have long been forgotten, some places cannot forget.”

Thus begins the harrowing yet poignant story of a North Vietnamese communist defector who spends ten years in a far-flung reform prison after the war, and now, in 1987, a free man again, finds work as caretaker at a roadside inn in the U Minh region. One day new guests arrive at the inn: an elderly American woman and her daughter, an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese girl adopted at the age of five from an orphanage in the Mekong Delta before the war ended. Catherine Rossi has come to this region to find the remains of her son, a lieutenant who went missing-in-action during the war.

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream tells the stories of two men in time parallel: Giang, the thirty-nine-year-old war veteran; Nicola Rossi, a deceased lieutenant in the United States Army, the voice of a spirit. From the haunting ugliness of the Vietnam War, the stories of these two men shout, cry, and whisper to us the voices of love and loneliness, barbarity and longing, lived and felt by a multitude of people from all walks of life: the tender adolescent vulnerability of a girl toward a man who, as a drifter and a war-hardened man, draws beautifully in his spare time; the test of love and faith endured by a mother whose dogged patience even baffles the local hired hand who thinks the poor old lady must have gone out of her mind, and whose determination drives her into the spooky forest, rain or shine, until one day she claims she has sensed an otherworldly presence in there with her.

In the end she wishes to see, just once, a river the local Vietnamese call “The River of White Water Lilies,” the very river her son saw, now that all her hopes to find his remains die out. Just then something happens. She finds out where he has lain buried for twenty years and how he was killed.

Treading the Uneven Road by L.M. Brown for review.

The stories in this collection are set 1980’s and 90’s Ireland. A by-pass around a small village has rid the residents of their once busy traffic. They feel forgotten by the world. The need to reach out and be heard is explored in every story, from the young woman who starts to have phone conversations with her husband’s gay lover, to the dyslexic man who confronts his cruel teacher years later and the woman whose dreams are shattered because of a married lover. Treading the Uneven Road introduces us to a society that is unraveling and we cannot help feel for Brown’s characters who need to make a choice on how to carry on.

Nanopedia: Poems by Charles Jensen, which I purchased and can’t wait to dig into.

Taking the form of “the world’s smallest encyclopedia” of American culture, the prose poems in Nanopedia explore concepts coined in or corrupted by (or both) America from vantage points that are both deeply personal and politically charged.

Love_Is_Love: An Anthology for LGBTQIA+ Teens edited by Emma Eden Ramos. 3 of my poems are in this anthology and there’s a giveaway for it here. Purchases support The Trevor Project.

Love_is_Love is a collection of poems, short stories, and visual art for LGBTQIA+ teens. All of the proceeds will be donated to The Trevor Project, an organization that has been saving the lives of LGBTQIA+ teens since 1998.

 

Rabbit & Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits by Julian Gough and Jim Field for review.

“It’s the end of the world,” said a gloomy voice.
Bear looked all around. “No it isn’t,” said Bear cautiously. “It’s a lovely sunny day.”

In this laugh-out-loud funny story, a rabbit and bear discover that things are always better when they’re shared with a friend.

Bear wakes up early from hibernation. If she can’t sleep, then at least she can make a snowman.

Rabbit has never made a snowman, but he definitely wants to make one that’s better than Bear’s.

However, with an avalanche and a hungry wolf heading his way, Rabbit soon realises that it might be nice to have a friend on your side. Especially when it comes to building snowmen.

A tale of friendship, gravity, and just a little bit of poo.

What did you receive?

Beauty and the Beast: A Coloring Book by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, Walter Crane

Source: Media Masters Publicity
Paperback, 96 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Beauty and the Beast: A Coloring Book by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, with illustrations by Walter Crane, is a beautifully appointed coloring book for children and adults alike.  Kids may have trouble staying in the lines, but the story is beautifully rendered in these pages.  The illustrations are intricate and easily hide the spying Beast among the roses and the forest, but Beauty has little fear as she makes her way to the mysterious palace.

While there are many pages to color inside the book, there are several pages of patterns that repeat, with swirls or birds or roses.  There are few lines of text from the original story, which we had expected to be a bit more of.  It’s hard for a younger reader to grasp the scope of this beloved story with so few lines from the original tale.  However, my daughter really enjoyed creating her own rose gardens and painting the birds with her crayons and other materials.

Beauty and the Beast: A Coloring Book by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, with illustrations by Walter Crane, is a delightful book for coloring to calm the mind.

RATING: Quatrain

Animal Adventures: Sharks

Source: publicist
Hardcover, 40 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Animal Adventures: Sharks by Cynthia Stierle is a box full of undersea wonder, with 6 plastic sharks, 20 fact cards about different species, a diorama to create, and four 3D puzzles. This was another activity that my daughter snatched up the minute it came and opened it right away. The box is eye-catching and full of sharks and other activities. Stickers complete the package.

We worked on the diorama of coral and other life together as she wasn’t sure how to get them to stand up in the cardboard base. Other than that, she put together the 3D sharks herself and set about telling her own sea stories with the diorama once we’d finished.

sharkadventure

She did ask about some of the sharks and I read some of the information on the cards to her. We enjoyed Animal Adventures: Sharks by Cynthia Stierle. We’ll likely get back to playing and learning soon.

RATING: Cinquain

Make and Move: Shark

Source: publicist
Hardcover, 28 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Make and Move: Shark by Jen Green includes a 28-page book and 20 pieces to build a 37-inch shark floor puzzle. The puzzle is easy enough for a Kindergartner to put together on their own with little help. My daughter set to work on the puzzle the moment it arrived on the doorstep. She loved how there were pieces that moved like joints and fins that moved as if the shark could swim. We talked about the jaw and the internal organs we put together.

makeshark

The book itself is attached to the box with the puzzle pieces, and it explains what sharks are, how they swim, what senses they have, and how they breathe underwater. There were many different types of sharks in the book, and each has a different body shape. My daughter was fascinated that there were sharks that hunted food by spiraling.

Make and Move: Shark by Jen Green provides kids with educational material and a fun activity. My daughter was eager to do the puzzle again after the first time.

RATING: Quatrain

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Pop-Up Book by Lisa Ann Marsoli and Keith Andrew Finch

Source: Silver Dolphin Books
Paperback, 12 pgs
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Pop-Up Book by Lisa Ann Marsoli and Keith Andrew Finch is a classic story for the holidays, and many of us who have grown up since the classic television show was first aired remember this heart-warming story.  In many ways, it is an anti-bullying story, but more than anything its about spreading kindness and giving to others.  Rudolph is a reindeer who doesn’t quite fit in, but through his journey and with the help of Santa Claus, who realizes the error of his earlier judgments, he finds that he has more to give than he first thought.

The pop-up book, which is out in time for the Christmas special’s 50th anniversary, gives these classic characters new life for kids of all ages, and for collectors and adults too.  The images are those of the television classic and the story is truncated, but through the simple 3-D images, young readers will be awed by the flying reindeer and the gang.  This is sure to become part of every family’s holiday tradition.  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Pop-Up Book by Lisa Ann Marsoli and Keith Andrew Finch allows parents to share one of their time-honored classics with their children in a new and engaging way.

83rd book for 2014 New Author Reading Challenge.