Little Simon: Simon & Schuster
Rating: 5 stars
My kids and I became fans of Courtney Pippin-Mathur years ago when we came across Maya Was Grumpy, a book where a girl's hair becomes wilder and wilder as she becomes grumpier and grumpier. With the help of one clever grandmother, both her mood and her hair are tamed. In addition to loving her work as an author/illustrator, Courney Pippin-Mathur helped me out at the Great Falls Writer's Day about two years ago, leading a workshop for young author/artists. What did these children do? They created their own dragons, then wrote stories about them. This book had just been sold, and dragons were on Courtney's mind.
But now, the book is finally out!
Dragons Rule, Princesses Drool! starts out with one small dragon, who wants to believe in his own strength and magnificence and importance. His flames "blasted into the sky, frightening everyone who came near!"
"Well, almost everyone."
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| "Well, almost everyone." |
He needs help, so he goes to the royal knight--who turns out not to care one bit about the princesses. He wants the dragons!
With all of his dragon buddies caught up in one big net, our little dragon has no one but the princesses to turn to for help. And you'll love how they help the dragons: with one big giant, flamey BURP!
The way this book plays on and dances around gender norms and expectations is cute and sweet and important. And, in the end, our little dragon is friends with the very princesses he first plots against. That sort of ending is not just satisfying for readers of this book, but also is pretty normal in real-life childhood adventures.
, b) because it was a princess book that she wanted to read it. She listened dutifully and then went back to playing with the train table. I asked her if she liked it and she said, "Not really. Princesses do wear pink, you know."
(4 stars) This is the original, and it's pretty easy to see why so many little girls fell in love with Fancy Nancy. It's a good read, and there's a lot to look at in the little pictures, though I don't really encourage careful study of Fancy Nancy's room because over my dead body would Lorelei's room look like that! 
(3.5 stars) Nancy stays up late looking at the photo album that belongs to her neighbor, and then she realizes how tough it is to be sweet and fun and engaging without a good night's sleep. This is a must read if you have a newborn in the house, so your kids gain a TINY bit of understanding about why you're so tired, and maybe just a little crabby.
(2 stars) This book was hard to get through. I skimmed it while reading it to Lorelei. The sub-title should be: How to have your very own spa day. Fancy Nancy gives recipes/instructions for facials and pedicures and stuff like that. I think it'd be fun if your daughter is 5 or 7 and can do everything herself, but this is not the bonding activity I prefer at this age. That type of thing is my escape! Don't make me do it at home! 
(4 stars) We like this one, mostly because we have some gigantic butterfly bushes (they are seriously out of control) that magically attract some gorgeous butterflies. Today we tried to catch them with a net--I wish I had a camera because Ben was holding the net and trying to stick the poor butterfly with the rod attached to the net. Oops. We'll have to reread this one again, so I can show Ben how to catch a butterfly, not stab it. Also, we're planning a trip to the butterfly garden in DC because of this book.
(4 stars) This is actually a great book if you're thinking about getting a dog, because Nancy really wants a tiny little dog like her neighbor but, when she takes care of it for a few days, she realizes it's not the dog for her, or for her family. (Check out our own posh puppy in the picture. That's Guidry, one of our rescued weims.)
(3 stars) Silly, but Lorelei's really into words, and she really likes alphabet books right now. 
(3 stars) I do like the poems at the end, but the story before you get there is annoying. Nancy whines about not being able to write a poem even though everyone else can do it so easily. She finally writes an ode to her teacher and I can't believe that the illustrator resisted the temptation to draw in a few of her classmates rolling their eyes at Nancy's brown-nosing poem. 
(4 stars) This book was within a great find--the I Can Read section of our library. These books are mostly just the right length (in my opinion, the Berenstain Bears or some Dr Seuss books are long enough to qualify for one bedtime book, rather than two shorter ones) and actually teach a simple lesson or tell a simple story. The words are all short and simple, so wanna-be readers like Lorelei have a good chance of looking at the word and guessing what it is, especially if they know the gist of the story already. This book is, you guessed it, about the day Nancy wears pajamas to school. She feels excluded because she chooses to wear frilly ones instead of the ones her pal Bree suggested.
(5 stars) This is the only one I'd buy, and it might go on Lorelei's Christmas list. I really think that it's hard to find a good book that introduces kids to green concepts in just the right way--not too much, not too little--and this book does a good job. Nancy makes up little rhymes (such as, "Less than a mile, ride in style" to encourage bike riding instead of car driving) so she and her family can be make better choices for the environment.
(4.5 stars) Another good one for our neck of the woods--because we have a bunch of poison ivy in our woods and I don't even know what it looks like! But now Lorelei a) knows what it is and that it's better to stay away from it, b) knows what it looks like, and c) knows the rhyme "Leaves of three, let it be!" This is a book we'll check out again and again--each time we go camping, or every now and then to remind ourselves of the not-so-great stuff in our backyard.