Tinyville Town by Brian Biggs

Tinyville Town: Gets to Work! by Brian Biggs
Abrams Appleseed

Rating: 5 stars

Recently I upped the ante on my kids' chores. They've gotten a weekly-ish (I forget frequently but always pay up) allowance for about two years. Each receives the same amount as their age--I'm not sure if this is exactly fair or right because Kiefer ends up doing about the same as Lorelei. But he often earns a few extra dollars every week helping me or my husband in a big way. Now that I've delegated more jobs to my kids, I only put the dishes away once a week now! They vacuum, sweep, feed our dog, wipe the table, and put the endless piles of laundry away.

While I want to take a load off of my own shoulders, my main goal is to teach them what it takes to run a household and to train them to be an active participant. "We all pitch in," I tell them. "We all do our part."

The cute, neck-lacking people of Tinyville...

That's what I like about Brian Biggs' series about Tinyville Town: these cute and smiley, hard-working and neck-lacking people live together and do their part to keep the town working. This particular book Gets to Work! starts out with things running smoothly, but they soon encounter a problem: a big traffic jam is keeping the trash collectors from collecting the trash, the bus driver from getting to the bus stop, and (the biggest problem) the baker from delivering his donuts!

The leaders of the town get together, discuss, and realize the solution: a new, bigger bridge. And one that looks nice, too. The right people--the city planner and the engineer--design the bridge, and the next people to solve the problem, the construction team, soon begins to build the bridge. By the end of the book, things are running smoothly again, and the no-neck people of Tinyville are all smiles.

(Kiefer was particularly enamored by the ribbon-cutting at the end of the book, when the mayor officially opens the new bridge. "Do they always cut it? Do they leave the ribbon up for forever?" I never know what's going to grab my kids' interest...love that this little part was the most interesting part of this book, at least during the first reading!)

Hope your own family and town are running smoothly today!