Where's My Teddy? by Jez Alborough

Where's My Teddy? by Jez Alborough

Rating: 2.5 stars

The succinct version: Beautiful pictures, but a dud overall.

We found Where's My Teddy? early in my search for great children's books. I did some serious Googling one night when I couldn't sleep; I was looking for all the lists I could on the best children's books. I found five or six lists (of course I'm sure there are more out there...there are books published about what books you should read) and then made my own list of all these. Then I just went down the list at our local library, ordering and reading, ordering and reading.

Side note: I say "order" because we order 90% of all our library books from the comfort of our computer room, where Ben can run around and be loud. Then we zip to the library, pick up our holds, choose a few more, and check out. This process takes 5-15 minutes. The librarians always laugh at us--we deserve it!

Anyway, Where's My Teddy? is on one the lists I found...man, which one was it? I can't remember. We like Hug, another Alborough book, so I thought we'd try this one. On a positive note, the illustrations are gorgeous! We read this book at the beach, and it made me miss our backyard--the whole story takes place in woods with gorgeous, tall trees with a thick canopy of leaves overhead. It's a simple tale of a little boy losing his teddy, then finding a giant one that actually belongs to a giant bear, who is bemoaning the fact that his teddy somehow shrunk. The giant bear isn't very friendly, but he's afraid of the little boy, who is of course afraid of the big bear. They each run home to their respective beds, happy to take home their very own teddy that actually fits in their bed.

Overall, it's okay. The story and illustrations are so simple that I can't imagine reading it more than a few times. It was fun to read aloud to Ben and Lorelei, but this was not one that they requested more than once. It is one of books that gets read a few times, then pushed aside. Check it out if you're into bears, but not worth buying.