Author: Louise Lintvelt
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated by Julie Sneedon.
I tried searching for this on Barnes and Noble and all it turned up was turned was The Night Before Christmas. What in Merry hell the one has to do with the other, only B&N knows. This is why corporate mega-giant Amazon is kicking their sorry behind in the on-line retailing business on its speedy way to becoming a monopoly.
I was really disappointed in this. It could have offered so much more than it did. The whole experience was funny because when I ran this through the spell-checker to catch anything I'd missed, the checker idiotically checked the URL to the cover image, found some random letters, and suggested 'brainpower'! I agree that was what was missing here! The construction song was poorly thought-out (and the tune wasn't even original. Yes, it would have been hard to convey an original tune in a print book unless the reader can read music; however, that said, my smart phone, the Kindle, and the iPad all can play tunes!
The biggest problem with this was that it felt all-around really poorly made. It needed to look at least like someone cared about how this book appeared, and I didn't get that impression at all. The words to the song were perfunctory at best, and the art work was dismal. I'm sorry but it was. I know kids don't expect masterpieces, but that doesn't mean we're forced to give them less-than average materials.
By the time I reached "This is the way I dump my load" I honestly felt that's what had been done here. I know many kids will be happy with just a sing-song, but that doesn't mean we don't owe them more than that if we can deliver it. This was a golden opportunity not only to offer a fun sing-along, but to take another step and teach young children a bit about building firm foundations, both metaphorically and practically, maybe helping them with building blocks to learn how things go together and why things all fall down. Kids are not born dumb. We adults make them that way by depriving them of rich learning environments. They yearn to learn even at a very young age and this could have been a fun play and teaching experience, but instead we get this lackluster which I can't in good conscience recommend.
