Koala Lou by Mem Fox

Koala Lou by Mem Fox, illustrated by Pamela Lofts

Rating: 4.5 stars

During the recent Winter Olympics we searched high and low for some children's books to explain what the games were. We came up empty-handed...and figured that the Olympics Committee had copyrighted everything to the extent that they'd be officially un-thrilled with me using the O-word in this posting! Anyway, with that search and after I read Mem Fox's book Reading Magic (I'll blog on that later; amazingly I paused to read a book for my own age group), I found Koala Lou What a gem!

Little Koala Lou is the oldest koala in the family, and after all her little brothers and sisters are born, she seeks to regain the attention and love of her mother by participating in the "Bush Olympics." Of course, her mother loved her all along and, not of course, she doesn't win the gum tree climbing event. I think that losing--well--is a great little lesson for kids. Some of my friends would disagree heartily--but who in this world wins every time? Certainly not me in Scrabble, I must report sadly. In almost all other books, the main character achieves the objective and wins the gold and reaches the top...but in this one, little Koala Lou is sad--and Lorelei definitely feels sad for her--but when her mother throws her arms around her and reaffirms her love... I admit that a) I'm a sap and b) tears came to my eyes the first time I read it. And no, I wasn't pregnant when that happened.

The book has a great sing-songy rhythm to it--my daughter loves to read the part "Koala Lou, I do love you!" which appears on half of the pages. The illustrations (thanks to Pamela Lofts) are beautiful and there's a lot to look at and discuss. It'd be a fine book to bring on a plane, for example, because there are all sorts of crazy animals from Australia and a great scene where all the animals wear fabulous hats.