Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka

Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon

Rating: 5 stars

This is a great, great book for boys!  I'm bummed I've only just found it.  Jon Scieszka is the creator of the blog Guys Read, a blog created to help boys become life-long readers.  I'm all for that!

In this book, he simply but cleverly rewrites all the classic nursery rhymes to make them dirty and funny and...truck-y!  And David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon add some super cute, sometimes silly, sometimes funny illustrations to compliment the nursery rhyme.

Here are a few examples:

Patty Cake, Patty Cake 

Patty cake, patty cake, Dumper Dan.
Dump me some dirt as fast as you can.
Slide it and drop it and mark it DD,
And pile it in the lot for Melvin and me. 

Jack and Kat 

Jack and Kat raced up the hill
To burn some crazy rubber.
Jack zoomed down,
Right through Trucktown,
And Kat came scraping after.

This is a fantastic birthday book for a 2- or 3- year old boy (or truck-obsessed girl).

Jon Scieszka has written a few Trucktown books after this; they are a great preschool/kindergarten series you should definitely know about if, like me, you've got a boy or two in your charge.  We've read a bunch of them and like them...check them out here.

It's Christmas, David! by David Shannon

 It's Christmas, David!  by David Shannon

Rating: 2.5 stars

Will I get coal in my stocking if I give a bad rating to a book this close to Christmas?  Hope not...

I'm not a fan of most of David Shannon's books, including the whole No, David! series.  His colorful but crude drawings depicting various degrees of naughtiness (or "bad choices") are definitely amusing to kids, but...these are images--and sometimes words*--that I'd prefer my kids not see or hear/read.

Each two-page spread in It's Christmas, David! has David's parents telling him something NOT to do: Don't look for presents before Christmas! Don't swipe the Christmas cookies!  Don't pay with the ornaments!  Don't throw snowballs at the windows!

(It's only funny if it's not your child...)

Finally, on Christmas morning, David receives a few "yeses" and can do the things he's been wanting to do.  Except throw snowballs at the windows...I'm guessing that one is still off limits.

For me, it's just not entirely funny.  With two boys I'd like to limit their inspiration for mischief as much as possible.


* In Alice the Fairy (review here) Alice calls her mother "the wicked Duchess."  I assure you that, even when accurate, hearing that from one of my children's mouths would send me through the roof.

Alice the Fairy by David Shannon

Alice the Fairy by David Shannon

Rating: 4 stars

I think that there are probably a bunch of parents who might resent Alice a little.  She's a funny little girl who pretends she's a fairy--a temporary one, as she's not yet passed the tests required to be a permanent one--who thinks she has magical powers and uses them in her own home.  I must admit that I resent Alice a little because Lorelei has called me the same thing that Alice calls her mother: the wicked duchess. 

Humph.

Alice turns her dad into a horse and turns her dad's cookies into her own (that's my favorite line in the book).  She wants to turn her bath into a big, bouncy pile of Jello and make her dog sit on the ceiling instead of the floor.  I know that, like Lorelei has, there are a lot of little girls out there who have tried to make these things happen in their own homes.  Hopefully they've not succeeded, or else David Shannon will find his book banned!

Lorelei and Ben LOVE this book.  They are captivated by it and love the crazy illustrations.  Like I said in an earlier post that compared David Shannon's books to another, his illustrations are messy and magical, even the ones that aren't about fairies.  His stories are exactly what they wish would happen in their lives.  All of the books we've read by him are told from the child's perspective, which is fun for kids.  I must admit that the wicked Duchesses out there might agree with me that sometimes this is less amusing for the parents!