Cinderelephant by Emma Dodd

Cinderelephant by Emma Dodd

Rating: 4 stars

Confession: I am not a fan of Cinderella.  I think the story of how a raggedy, beautiful maid gets some magical help to attend a ball where a prince falls in love with her, then marries her and they live happily ever is downright maddening. I will not bore you with the details of my dislike...

And yet, I can't help but like this book, a silly rip off of the original Cinderella.  It is filled with so many elephantine jokes and references, that I can't help but admit Emma Dodd deserves long and loud applause because she clearly produced a very funny book.

You know the story--Cinderelephant lived with her cousins (the warthog sisters) and did all the cooking and cleaning, and did not get invited to the fancy party thrown to enable Prince Trunky--son of Queen Wrinkley and King Saggy--to find a girlfriend.  Luckily, though, her Furry Godmouse flicked his magical tail and POOF! helped her find a sparkly number that fit her just right. She goes, he falls in love with her, she doesn't leave early enough and has to run home, yet drops one of her sparkly shoes.  The prince uses said shoe to find her, and when the shoe fits, he declares, "You are the one for me!"

"Wow, you look amazing! Go to the party and enjoy yourself,"
said the Furry Godmouse, "but, and it's a big but...you must
be home by midnight."

And then they "were married the very next day. And, of course, they were hugely happy ever after."

My disbelief just could not be suspended on the last few pages.  I sure wish they had at least dated a few months. Perhaps they could have had a few long conversations where Cinderelephant's other interests and ideas and imagination could have been shared with the reader?  Perhaps visited each other's families, or gone on a long road trip together to test their compatibility? Am I being a little too Muggle about this? Sigh. I think I am.

The elephant references are so very witty, the pictures so very adorable, and hopefully you'll talk with your kids about the amount of time they really ought to take with serious life choices like marriage!

I Love Bugs! by Emma Dodd

I Love Bugs! by Emma Dodd

Rating: 4 stars

Somehow, these pictures seem to jump out at me.  Usually that's a good thing, but with a book on bugs, I sorta want to grab a flyswatter and swat the mosquitoes away so they don't bite me.  I told this to Ben, and now he tries to hit the bugs as I turn the page.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should have kept that observation to myself...

This is a basic preschooler book, but a good one.  It's a great one to introduce the whole concept of what my Thai friends would call "same-same-different," or comparison.  On all the pages are bugs, but they are so unique!  So different!  So special!  What a wonderful little lesson for our kids and their budding uniqueness in their little preschool pools of should-we-conform-or-not-ness.  (Did that sentence make sense at all?  I'm keeping it...hoping you figure it out.)

"Yes, I love all bugs!  Hope and fly and crawl bugs."

One page is dedicated to flying and fluttering bugs, another to flying and buzzing bugs, and still another to flying and whiny-buzzing bugs.  (Not sure I get the difference between simply buzzing and whiny-buzzing, but I love that my kids might pause to listen hard--really hard!!--to the sounds that bugs make as they fly.)

A very cute book, worth checking out very soon.  Don't be afraid of the centipede on page six...I am pretty sure it won't crawl off the page and onto your arm...!