by Jess Hernandez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If it has unicorns on/in it then I'm likely to 'need' to read it. Lol.
This is a cute little story about a donkey that wants to attend a prestigious unicorn school.
The story starts out a bit awkward... our donkey is planning to wear a party hat (and lied on their application) to school. So I can only give this 4 stars because it kind of says that lying is okay if you just want to be included. This is a bit difficult given this is a children's book and kids are unlikely to understand the overall premise here. However, the end of the book has a lovely moral about how it's best to just be inclusive and not say only one animal species can attend. We find out that many other animals lied in order to attend unicorn school.
So on one hand this is great to teach kids. It's just unfortunate that to get to the right place our donkey had to lie first. All that 'perfect' moral discussion aside; I'm willing to concede that this is very accurate to how real life often ends up unfolding. We end up telling a small lie to benefit in a larger way. This is a slippery slope and so I'd recommend pairing this story up with others about how lying is not a good thing just in case.
I loved the colourful artwork, the simplicity of the illustrations is really nice too. A short, cute story that would work as an upbeat bedtime story and would be appropriate to gift to any child.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If it has unicorns on/in it then I'm likely to 'need' to read it. Lol.
This is a cute little story about a donkey that wants to attend a prestigious unicorn school.
The story starts out a bit awkward... our donkey is planning to wear a party hat (and lied on their application) to school. So I can only give this 4 stars because it kind of says that lying is okay if you just want to be included. This is a bit difficult given this is a children's book and kids are unlikely to understand the overall premise here. However, the end of the book has a lovely moral about how it's best to just be inclusive and not say only one animal species can attend. We find out that many other animals lied in order to attend unicorn school.
So on one hand this is great to teach kids. It's just unfortunate that to get to the right place our donkey had to lie first. All that 'perfect' moral discussion aside; I'm willing to concede that this is very accurate to how real life often ends up unfolding. We end up telling a small lie to benefit in a larger way. This is a slippery slope and so I'd recommend pairing this story up with others about how lying is not a good thing just in case.
I loved the colourful artwork, the simplicity of the illustrations is really nice too. A short, cute story that would work as an upbeat bedtime story and would be appropriate to gift to any child.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
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1 comment:
I love how much thought you put into reviewing children's books and what message they might deliver to the actual kids. It surely is something to be careful about, but then I think talking to the kids about what you just read is just as important as the story itself, and many classic/popular children's books have 'problematic' bits to them?
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