I'm Bad! by Kate and Jim McMullan

I'm Bad! by Kate and Jim McMullan

Rating: 3.5 stars

Yesterday as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I watched as a hawk swooped down in front of me to a spot where an unlucky chipmunk must have been peeking its head innocently out from under a bush.  This huge hawk kind of squatted, with his talons on something, and rolled its neck around as if looking for someone to which he could gloat.  I was captivated but wanted Lorelei, who was coloring on the other side of the kitchen, to see.  So I grabbed her, hoping not to break the spell, and showed her.  Just as we dashed back to the window, the hawk took off in front of us, and we watched him powerfully flap through an opening into our woods.

Crazy!  Lorelei was impressed, but I couldn't contain my excitement.  "Did you see that?  Did you see that?  WOW!"  I kept saying.  I explained to Lorelei that he was looking for lunch and, I guessed, he found some.

If your kids don't realize that cute chipmunks are lunch for someone else, then maybe you should hold off on this book.  Because this big, bad Tyrannosaurus Rex is just looking for lunch.  His prey keeps foiling him again and again until he finds his mother, a bigger and badder Tyrannosaurus Rex.  She gives him "take out," which is a small dinosaur that she places at his feet.  He feasts on it (that part is actually not seen--you read "Gobble, snarf, yum, gobble" and I think it's pretty obvious to even kids what is going on) and then curls up with the bone on the next page, declaring "I love my mommy."

At what point do we teach kids about the life cycle?  I think the answer is when we must, whenever that is in your respective family.  For us, it begins a little earlier because our dogs have already turned up with prizes of their own--a chipmunk here, a baby raccoon there, a toad or a newt.  They are always hunting something.  So, for us, this book was pretty entertaining, as all of Kate and Jim McMullan's books are.  But, if you'd rather wait to teach that everything is someone else's lunch, maybe don't check this one out!

I'm Mighty! by Kate & Jim McMullan

I'm Mighty! by Kate & Jim McMullan

Rating: 4.5 stars

Lots of people who know lots more than I do agree that some books are and should be written just to get kids interested in books.  You know, they don't teach very much but they are cute and funny and...well, they are sort of like a welcome mat to the wonderful world of books.

This is one of them.  This cute--well, he'd want me to say tough--little tugboat has more personality than I ever realized tugboats could have!  The text is bold and energetic, jumps around the pages, and invites the parent/caregiver/reader to use get in touch with their inner tugboat and half grunt, half shout the words as their little one/s check out the adorable illustrations.

Luckily, I am a total ham, which definitely helps Lorelei and Ben pay attention to books that I'm reading.  Let's just say that my inner tugboat (and, when I'm reading I'm Dirty!, my inner bull-dozer...we've not read I Stink! or I'm Bad! yet, but we I look forward to getting in touch with my inner garbage truck and inner dinosaur, respectively) is alive and well, and frequently cracks up everyone in the room. 

Including me.