I Am a Bear by Ben Bailey Smith, Sav Akyüz

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb lies once again. It tells us that "Bear fills his day with food, funny jokes, tricks on his friends" and frankly that latter is all bear does. He zips on his fur coat before heading out - a violaceous fur coat - and spends his day pulling mean pranks on people (animals mostly, but in one case, an actual police officer). Written by first-time-and-it-shows children's author Smith, and illustrated just so-so by Akyüz, this book tells children how to go through life being a dick - and how to swallow a live squirrel whole, in case you wondered. It's not funny; it's not educational, and it's not entertaining. I do not remotely commend this.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, Henry Cole

Rating: WORTHY!

Justin Richardson is a doctor, Peter Parnell a playwright, and Henry Cole an illustrator. How they all came together to create this true story is a mystery to me, but I'm glad they did. There's an ignorant but powerful element out there who believe that same sex relationships are an abomination, and also a choice made by people, although they can never explain why people would make a choice to become victims of the abuse and violence aimed at them by these same vile people who think they somehow have the right to dictate how everyone else should live. Wrong!

And nature itself proves them wrong - very wrong. It's not a human choice, it's a perfectly natural happenstance. Gender isn't binary. It's a sliding scale which can slide one way or another throughout life, and it's not a human thing but an animal thing - and I mean that in a generic sense, not a punitive one. We are all animals, and many animals have LGBTQ members. This book amply demonstrates that by telling the true story of two male penguins who decided they wanted to emulate any reproductive couple.

Roy and Silo (who have their own Wikipedia entry!) are chinstrap penguins who built a nest and tried to hatch a rock. This doesn't work. Rather than have them trying to steal another couple's egg, some inspired and inspiring members of the zoo staff gave them an egg from a cis couple who were not able to hatch two eggs. Roy and Silo successfully hatched the egg and raised 'their' daughter - Tango - successfully. Evidently taking her cue from her parents, Tango herself paired with a female penguin called Tanuzi, although this part of the story doesn't appear in this book.

This book was listed among the top-ten banned books for five years, which is why everyone ought to read it. I commend it. It plays a little bit fast and loose with the true story, but not by much and it's still worth reading even so.

Counting birds by by Heidi EY Stemple

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I was truly disappointed in this book. It certainly is a good idea to get kids out into the fresh air and exercising as well as hopefully doing something for the environment, but what exactly are they doing for the environment? This is where this book failed for me and why I cannot rate it positively.

There was another minor issue in that this book is designed as a print book and not as an ebook. In the ebook, the pages are presented not as single pages, but as double pages meaning you can only view them two at a time, which means they're small, and you have to fiddle with the magnification to see them optimally. Having them as single pages viewed in portrait format would have helped, but the pages are designed as two-page spreads, so that effect would have been lost. My advice is not to buy this for reasons I will go into, but if you want to buy it, do not buy it in ebook format.

I said above, "hopefully doing something for the environment" because there was nothing in this book to say what the purpose of bird counting is or how it actually benefits the environment or the birds. The original idea, from Frank Chapman in 1900 was that instead of going out shooting birds, which seemed to be something of an insane and barbaric tradition on Christmas Day (I wonder how many doves were slaughtered on Christmas Day by the good Christians with their guns?), he would call upon readers of his magazine to go out and do nothing more than count them, and report their results in to the magazine.

That's great, but if that's all it is: counting, then the logic is flawed. The people who went out counting were not necessarily the same people - and I would argue it's highly unlikely they were the same people - as those who were out shooting. And merely counting was doing nothing to save any birds.

Now you can argue that keeping a yearly tally of birds at least allows us to track their numbers over time, but this is precisely what the author has failed to argue in this book because she offers no justification whatsoever for counting the birds, and there needs to be one for all those children who will ask, as I would have as a child: how is this helping the birds?

Just knowing that, say, bird species X is in decline isn't going to do species X a damned bit of good unless action is taken on that knowledge - and assuming those numbers are reliable. But are they? There was no word on that, either. Nor does a wish to act do any good unless the government can be moved to put protections into place - and good luck with that with the present business-obsessed administration who are determinedly destroying environmental protections as fast as they can and outright lying about pollution and climate change.

This book was some twenty pages long and nowhere in it was any kind of word about exactly how this is helping, save for one tiny, brief, and rather vague paragraph on page fifteen. Now word on how the numbers translate to help or even to a plan to help. No word on what kind of help has been given over the last century. No word on whether it has worked. No word on species saved, if any. No word on how conservation has improved. Nothing.

This is unacceptable and unforgivable, because what it means is that this author is asking us to mindlessly go out and count birds - and that's it! Hey, I do, and you should do it too! That's not rescuing the environment, it's acting like a sheep with its attendant wooly thinking. Don't treat your readers like sheep. Treat them like intelligent human beings and give them solid reasons for asking them to do as you do. It's for this reason that I refuse to commend this book as a worthy read. It falls far too short of where it needed to be.

Matt the Green Cat by Jenny Mitchell, Abira Das

Rating: WARTY!

I wasn't impressed with this. The story, written by Jenny Mitchell, and illustrated colorfully but lazily by Abira Das, is supposed to be about accepting differences, but the cat really isn't different: it's just paint-stained, so that it's green instead of ginger. Perhaps this isn't going to be noticed by young children, but it bothered me.

Matt the cat is green. His mom was repainting the wall in one of the rooms in their house (so kudos for allowing that a woman can paint rather than defaulting to the dad!), and Matt got splashed. Rather than put him in the tub and wash him off, everyone seems to suddenly accept that Matt is now green and is stuck with it.

This struck me as weird also! The rest of the story is then about Matt parading aimlessly around and being accepted by everyone he meets with no issues. I don't think that quite gets to the core of the matter! Unless the author's intention as something quite different from what I thought it was (color-prejudice), which is quite possible.

I had a problem with Matt in that every picture of him was pretty much the same - like the artist could paint only one perspective. I swear his head was reused several times and never once does he look at the reader. This gave him an air of arrogance and superiority which mitigated strongly against the air of affability with which the author seemed to want to imbue him. Again, it's for young kids ands maybe they won't notice, but why take that chance?

The worst problem with this book though is that the image wouldn't shrink to fit the iPhone I first read this on unless the iPhone was in portrait position in which case it was way small. it was way small anyway, so I looked at this book on my iPad and had the very same issue! It's not just the iPhone, it's Amazon's crappy failure of a Kindle app - yet again!

It was really annoying too, because picture was always larger than the screen which meant that often, the text wasn't visible. You either had to pinch the picture to reduce it and hold it to read the text, otherwise it would spring right back to oversized, or you'd have to slide the picture up and down (the width was fine, it was just the height that was off screen since my phone isn't square but rectangular!) until you found the text to read it.

Amazon doesn't care. They're so big, they don't have to care! Why waste effort on improving a free app when they can frustrate you through their incompetence to buy a device instead? This is one more reason why I thoroughly detest Amazon.

So, in short, I cannot recommend this, and I wouldn't advise selecting this book to read at all unless you do have some sort of tablet computer to read it on that's bigger than a phone.

Woody Saves the Day by Harvey Storm

Rating: WORTHY!

How can I not like a book which has a title character whose name so closely allied with my own?! Yes! Biased review coming up!

Woody is a mouse who rules by fear. He has a secret which makes other animals try to placate him with gifts, but life at the top can be a lonely one as Woody discovers, until along comes Rocky the fox, who is caught in a downpour and finds shelter in this strange and forbidding cave. Rocky discovers Woody's secret and urges him to come clean. Honesty is the best policy (as neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris pointed out in his very perceptive - and honest! - book Lying). Woody decides to take the plunge and face whatever it brings - and good for him!

This book is interesting and useful, and a good idea. The story is simple and the images colorful and illustrative. The only oddball thing I encountered was this sentence: "...and there was a terrible noise that made his wool stood on end." The verb tense is wrong and foxes do not have wool! They have a type of hair commonly referred to as fur, in keeping with all other members of the dog family. This made me wonder if English is not the author's first language and if his name is a fake one! C'mon, hurricane Harvey Storm?

That's a minor problem though, so overall, I commend this book as a worthy read for young children - and even a few adults who might be inclined to tell stretchers.

Jane Goodall by Isabel Sanchez Vegara

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is another in a series of books aimed at doing its part to redress the imbalance between genders when it comes to high achievers. This one shows young children that a determined young woman can do whatever she wants if she puts a mind to it.

The story simplifies Goodall's interesting and complex life considerably, but hopefully it will inspire children to read more about her as they mature. Her story is one of an abiding interest in animals ever since she was young, inspired in part by a plush toy she had as a child: a chimpanzee. From this simple beginning, she found her way to Africa and came into contact with famous human ancestry researcher Louis Leakey, who eventually dispatched her to work at Gombe, where Goodall's unorthodox research practices were at times criticized, but which nonetheless produced original and unexpected research results.

Goodall was one of three Leaky Ladies, so to speak, whom Leakey named 'The Trimates', the other two being Dian Fossey who died horribly at the hands of gorilla poachers, and Birutė Galdikas, who studied orangutans. Each of these has written one or more books on their studies. It would be nice to see a book in this series for each of the other two women. I commend this one as a great start.

Pig is Big on Books by Douglas Florian

Rating: WORTHY!

This was short, and sweet and entertaining, and will hopefully encourage children to emulate Pig and start reading. Pig reads all the time at every opportunity. I wouldn't commend going quite that far, although I do spend an inordinate amount of time reading myself. Well, not reading myself - reading books. You know what I mean! But anything that stirs a child's imagination constructively is always a good thing.

Putting on my child hat (it's always a good idea to have a child hat around!), I can say I enjoyed this colorful outing shamelessly! This book will definitely make reading sound cool or I'll eat my hat!

The Cow Said Neigh! by Rory Feek

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a fun children's book aimed at getting kids to understand and experiment with sounds and to consider when the wrong sound is coming from somewhere. I can see it leading to a wider discussion - maybe even about what it means when the smoke alarm goes off. Is that the right kind of sound to hear? But it's not about that. It's about a very confused farm!

In a series of fun, bright, and colorful images, and some happy verse, we discover that several of the farm and domestic animals - and even the farmer himself, are getting some weird ideas about their station in life! The cow sees the horse and decides she would like to run free - so she starts neighing. The horse starts quaking, the duck starts baaing and this cascade effect ricochets around the whole farm! Will it ever end? Hopefully, otherwise it'll be a long night reading this to your little loved one!

I commend this for a fun and instructive read to young children.

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook which I picked up because I'd very much enjoyed the last book I listened to by this author, and while the reading voice of Alison McGhee was quite a pleasure to listen to in this volume, the story was rather less than satisfying.

We're pretty much expected to believe that a young girl's sister dies by drowning, through her idiotic practice of running in the forest by a dangerous section of the river, but of course her body is never recovered. I found it hard to believe that there was no effort made to have divers find the body.

Apparently someone else had died here too, but there was no fencing and no signage that I heard of. That part was realistic because humans are morons when it comes to safeguarding lives, and in particular the lives of children. There have to be multiple deaths before preventive action is taken. It's the rule. Also, it's the rule in this book because everyone seems to be dying: people and animals alike! It's the Appelt Book of the Dead!

Anyway, sister one goes running off (for a ridiculous 'mission' she has to complete, which is later revealed for the stupid thing that it is), and is magically reincarnated as a fox. Why? Who knows? Maybe the author does, but she doesn't care to tell us - not in the part of this I could stand to listen to anyway, since this was a DNF for me.

A better question though is 'who cares?' because we're given no reason to invest in these people. The characters were uninteresting and uninspiring, and they did not draw me in. Adults are essentially non-existent and vacuous when they are. Children don't have childish thoughts.

The story was way too long and boring because it moved so slowly, which is ironic given that much is made of the speed of the running sister and of the fox she returns as. Given that the foxes have very human thoughts, leaving a ribbon for the sister to find as some sort of a message made no sense. Why not simply scratch the message in the dirt with a claw? Plus foxes are like dogs: they don't see green. An author writing about foxes ought to know this.

I was truly disappointed in this one. It was such a sorry contrast to The True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp, and I cannot commend it.

A Dog With Nice Ears by Lauren Child

Rating: WORTHY!

I've been in love with Charlie and Lola ever since my own kids used to watch this children's TV show. They're way beyond it now, but I still love these characters. They're a fictional bro and sis who were created by the very imaginative and inventive English writer and illustrator Lauren Child in 2000AD. This is one of the books. Until this, I'd seen only the TV show, but I have to say that this captured the show perfectly - or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the TV show captures the books perfectly since they came first.

There are several fun books to be had, assuming this one is anything to judge the rest by, but in this episode we're focused on Lola's desire to own a dog. Her parents are dead set against it. Shame on them, but I can understand a parent not wanting to get a dog for a very young child, because it's going to die on them when they're in their teens and that could be traumatizing, let's face it. I know it did me in.

Anyway Lola's perspective on what the dog should look like and how it should behave are predictably - knowing Lola as I do - bizarre. It's only when she gets her pet home that everything falls into place, and the result amused the heck out of me. Did I mentioned I loved the TV show?! And the author's name is Child for goodness sake!

I recommend this for any parent with a slightly off-kilter sense of humor and any kids who need to be nudged outside of their comfort zone once in a while. It's good for them. My kids lapped up the TV show, but then they're my kids, so what would you expect! LOL! I commend this book and I'll bet the entire series is a worthy read.

Hedge Hog by Ashlyn Anstee

Rating: WORTHY!

I used to keep pet hedgehogs when I was a kid and I adored them. Naturally when I saw this book I was interested in reading it. The key to how this is going to play out is in the fact that in the title, hedgehog isn't one word!

Hedgehogs are known fro balling up, but no hedgehog balls up like this one did. The animals are all getting ready for winter (unnaturally it must be said, if verisimilitude is your goal in children's books!) and are bunking up together to stay warm, unlikely bedfellows snuggling down for winter. The only one who seems to be antisocial is the hedgehog who frankly is rather prickly, and who refuses to let anyone share his hedge.

Well things go south - and it's not the animals. Hedgehog suddenly finds himself without a bunk and the other animals are kind enough to forgive him and let him in. Lesson learned.

This was a fun and playful book with amusing images and I commend it for any child who might need to learn a little about sharing, or who might just like a sweet, fun book that can open up a great discussion about selfishness.

The Last Jungle Book by Stephen Desberg, Henri Reculé

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

In Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Book stories, Mowgli is first introduced as a wild man living in the forest who is recruited into the forest ranger service because of his extraordinary jungle craft. He marries, has a child, and returns to the forest. In later stories, his childhood is related, but it really isn't quite like the sanitized Disney version (is anything?!).

I was very disappointed in this version, which let's face it is more of an introduction than a story. The blurb was completely misleading in that it suggests that Mowgli (rhymes with cow-glee) has returned to the scene of his childhood to write the last chapter in it - which I presumed would the the dispatch of his hated enemy Shere Khan (which means 'Tiger Chief', not 'lame'! 'Lungri' means lame - it was a nickname for Khan, who was lame). The problem is that none of this happens, nor will it since Mowgli is a silver-haired old man now in this story.

All we get is a pictorial re-telling of the popular version of Jungle Book with nothing new added. It makes Mowgli's vow at the end - to drape Shere Khan's pelt over the council rock of the wolves, all the more hollow, since no such thing ever happened in this story. It did happen in the original jungle books stories - not the draping but the capture of the pelt, so maybe there are more volumes to come, but even if there are, I was so disillusioned with this one that I have no interest in reading any more. This contributed nothing new, and while the artwork was acceptable and the writing not awful, neither of these offered anything truly new, original, or outstanding.

I can see why this was on Net Galley's 'Read Now' shelf. I cannot recommend it. I'd recommend going to Kipling's original material and reading that - and I believe it's all out of copyright now if you're looking for story ideas!

The Night Dragon by Naomi Howarth

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I recently favorably reviewed this artist's book Tug of War. I had slightly mixed feelings about that, but this book is not so much an order of magnitude greater, as it is in a different universe. It's a pure pleasure to read.

For some reason, this book did not want to download from Net Galley, but I'm glad I persisted. After three attempts it finally came down - dragons are like that! - and it turned out to be one of the most gorgeously-illustrated children's books I've ever read.

The cover looks like it's lit with neon lights, and the interior is one breathtaking image after another. Maud is a rainbow joy especially when compared with the earth tomes of the other dragons. I read this in my iPad, but out of curiosity I downloaded it to my iPhone too, and it still looked good on there although the text is too small to read without stretching the image on the screen, but the pictures are worth having in your pocket!

Maud is a very shy night dragon and while her four colleagues (they're not really friends) launch every evening to spew out soot and darken the sun for night time, Maud sits and dreams. Her only true friend is the mouse who urges her to fly, but Maud is shy.

One afternoon the other four dragons have a party - Maud isn't invited it needles to say - and afterwards the others are so sleepy that they fail to awaken to start the night. It's all up to Maud! It turns out that Maud really isn't like the other dragons after all. Instead of sooty, dark sunsets, she breathes out the most fiery orange, startling yellow, deep red, heliotrope, and gold sunsets you ever saw. She flies all around the world delivering this brilliant bounty of beauty, and finally comes into her own - as any artist will given sufficient encouragement and support!

I loved this book and I recommend it as a worthy read for children young and old.

Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt by Ben Clanton

Rating: WORTHY!

This is another in the Narwhal series, and it features Narwhal becoming a super hero - a sea-per hero? His sidekick is of course his friend, the electric jellyfish! One amusing thing about narwhals is that though they are, technically, toothed whales (akin to the dreaded orcas!), they are toothless - having only vestigial teeth loitering in their gums apart that is, from that one magnificent canine that sticks out like a unicorn's horn. The irony of this is that narwhals are a living kick in the teeth to creationists, which is one more reason to love them. You'd have to be a pretty inept or clueless creator god to 'design' a narwhal!

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a short, fun, colorful book about a narwhal and his relationship with his friend the jellyfish and other creatures of the ocean. narwhals are real, unicorns are not, and the narwhal's 'horn' isn' actually a horn, but a deformed canine tooth! Believe it or not. Narwhals are cetaceans, meaning that they are mammals just like humans - well, not just like! This book introduces the narwhal and sets up the series.

Birds of a Feather by Lorin Lindner

Rating: WORTHY!

This book is subtitled "A True Story of Hope and the Healing Power of Animals" but too often in reading it, I wondered if that subtitle should have read, "A True Story of Finding the Love of My life" given how much of the text is devoted to the author's partner, who was one of the vets she help bring back into society through what might be loosely described as her 'pairing with a parrot' technique.

There were so many vets who needed this help and according to the text, they got it, but only two of them seemed to get anywhere near the coverage that her husband gets. I found this to be peculiar and slightly annoying. I know he's more important to her than anyone else, but objectively, he's not more important than any other vet, nor was his case unique in any significant way. To be frank, I felt this rather cheapened her message and demeaned other veterans a little bit, but overall, I thought the story was too important and valuable to dismiss it on these grounds alone.

So that irritation aside, I found this book to be a worthy read because it really does get into the problems that both the birds and the vets have, although I could have done without the totally fictional account of the early life of one of her feathered charges named Sammy. Although the story of her capture is firmly rooted in the reality of the abusive wild capture of these magnificent and intelligent birds, the story she told in this particular case was way too anthropomorphized and melodramatic, and it almost made me quit reading the book in disgust.

After that though, things looked up considerably. We learn of how the author, in training to be a psychologist, came to be the caretaker of Sammy, a salmon-crested cockatoo, also known as a Moluccan cockatoo, who had been kept in the most appalling conditions. These birds are a part of the parrot family, although they are not true parrots, and most of these creatures are used to living in flocks. They are very intelligent and they suffer considerably when confined to cages, and neglected through lack of attention and stimulation. I noted at one point that the author erroneously describes budgerigars as “frequently but erroneously called a parakeet” but budgies are indeed parakeets! The author is in error!

This suffering of intelligent animals applies to very many sentient creatures of course, but some such as the parrot family, the corvids, the cetaceans, the canines, along with elephants, monkeys, and great apes, feel it much more because they are so very intelligent and sensitive. It isn't surprising, in this regard, that people do anthropomorphize them, and though I balk somewhat at that, I do not have any doubt that they need to be treated much more like humans - or perhaps more like children - than ever they are at present.

That does not mean they necessarily think as we do or perceive things in the same way we do, but it does mean they must be treated with respect, and as individuals, and as thinking, feeling beings, not as "nothing but animals." This is why owning a parrot is an unwise move. As the author points out, they form attachments and are long-lived. Additionally, they need the freedom to fly and explore, and they need frequent companionship.

It's downright cruel to buy one and stick it in a cage in the corner of the room and think you are caring for it. You're not. It's equally cruel to care for one and then give it up after it has formed an attachment to you. It seriously hurts them and it takes them a long time to recover and re-socialize. It's far better not to own any sort of parrot, especially if you want your house to be quiet and your furniture to remain intact....

The book is short and has short and quite pithy chapters, although there is some repetition in the pages and the story is more about the author, her husband, and parrots than it is about veterans although the latter are not exactly neglected by any means. The author tells us her story of how she first got to caring for parrots and how she also, through her work, got to caring for troubled veterans, and how purely accidentally, these two aspects of her life came to coincide with the sum being far greater, more amazing, and infinitely more worthwhile that either section was on its own.

Although, as I mentioned, the story is irritating at times, overall - be warned! - it's a real tear-jerker and the stories of how both the veterans and the parrots are treated - or more à propos, mistreated, can be heart-breaking, but the author, through her sterling efforts created, with the help of the veterans, and advised by the parrots, a haven, and the result is truly startling and exemplary. I recommend this book fully.

Splashdance by Liz Starin

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a book for children, about prejudice and determination, amusingly illustrated, beautifully written. Ursula and Ricardo are training hard for the water ballet competition. The prize is a million dollars and Ursula, who happens to be a bear, is confident they can win...until, that is, they see a sign "No Bears Allowed" at the pool! Other hairy animals are allowed in, but for some reason, bears are being profiled.

That's not even the worst thing to happen! Ricardo ditches Ursula for a giraffe - still hairy, but not banned! Thus provides some great talking points for a discussion with your child about prejudice and about lost friendships. Is your friend really a friend if they abandon you - especially when the abandonment stems from an unjust act against you? It's a good lead-in to talk about rumor and cruelty, and discriminating against people for unjust reasons.

The thing about Ursula though, is that she doesn't give up. She teams up with a bunch of misfit animals and they practice so hard, and sneak into the tournament anyway! In the end, fun is had, minds are changed, and a good lesson is learned. I liked this book and I recommend it as a worthy read for young children. I loved the title!

Polar Bear's Underwear by Tupera Tupera

Rating: WORTHY!

Tupera Tupera is a duo of authors who write children's books in Japan, where this book is known cutely as Shirokuma No Pants. The actual names of Tupera Tupera are Tatsuya Kameyama and Atsuko Nakagawa.

Polar Bear has new underwear, but can't find it anywhere! What a scare! Is it here, is it there? Is it rare to have a bare bear? The underwear is, as it happens quite close at hand, but your child will have to turn a few pages to find it unless they're very sharp-eyed! Little underwear-shaped cut-outs in every other page reveal the underwear of the next suspect in the list. Can you guess who is wearing the pants? Do they belong to Polar Bear? And why not? There are lots of questions here and each has an answer.

This struck me as a charming little book which provides a mystery and an adventure any young child can enjoy. Of course there's always the possibility that a page with a hole in it might tear if not handled gently, but children's book pages can tear anyway if the child is a little too aggressive, so I don't see this as an issue - not when compared with the activity and discovery. I thought this was a worthy read for young children, and it's the kind of adventure you can't really duplicate in an ebook. Fortunately I know exactly where my underwear is...or do I? Excuse me! Gotta run!

When Friendship Followed me Home by Paul Griffin

Rating: WARTY!

Read by the author - who actually doesn't do too bad of a job - this was another failed audiobook trial. The subject matter! Oh the subject matter. It's aimed at middle-grade boys, and is supposed to be your typical "I survived middle school" story for boys, but what it felt like to me was that the author seemed like he really wanted to tell a Star Wars story without paying a licensing fee to do so.

The first chapter opened with a quote from a Star Wars movie which didn't augur well, and if that had been all there was, it would have been fine, but then there were several more references to Star Wars in that same chapter. That's when I quit it. In the first chapter. It seriously rubbed me up the wrong way. I have devoutly gone off Star Wars - not that I was ever a huge dedicated fan or anything, but while I'm not quite anti-Star Wars, I'm also definitely not remotely interested in it anymore, after episode seven turned out to be nothing more than a remake of episode four. The whole series is uninventive and derivative and it's not entertaining or even interesting to me. So this book was a derivative of a derivative movie series! LOL!

The story is supposedly about this disaffected kid who is adopted by an older woman, and who knows when she retires in three years she's going to move with him to a different locale, so he decides it's not worth making friends? What a moron! Then of course he befriends this dog. Barf. I love dogs, but I hate stories about them. They've been overdone. I'm not even sure why I picked this up at the library, because the whole idea seems way too sugary now I think about it! I can only explain it by positing that I picked up a book, thought it looked okay but not that great, then changing my mind after putting it back, I pulled the wrong book back off the shelf! LOL!

I honestly cannot face listening to any more of that, especially when I have other audiobooks to go at. I'm sure there are middle-graders who will enjoy a story such as this one but that doesn't mean I have to rate it a worthy read! It's schlock and of the lowest form (unless it magically changed after the point at which I quit - which I seriously doubt). It's unimaginative and uninventive, and I can't recommend it.

Panda-monium by Stuart Gibbs

Rating: WARTY!

Read slightly annoyingly by Gibson Frazier, this audiobook started out interestingly enough. It's part of a series where the middle-grade boy solves mysteries. Frankly, if this is to be the basis of my judgment (I have no other!) then Teddy Fitzroy really doesn't do very much and worse, his life really isn't very interesting! This is, I believe, the fourth in this series, all set in a zoo-cum-theme park named FunJungle - evidently based on SeaWorld® in San Antonio, Texas.

The panda disappeared apparently from a moving truck on a highway, such that when the truck left, the panda was on board, and when the truck arrived, it was no longer there. I thought a cool way to do this for a kids' book would be to have a false panel at the far end of the trailer, so that the panda could be hid behind it and the truck looked empty, but given that the FBI were involved in this investigation (pandas are considered to be the property of China), I doubt such a ruse would fool them!

I never did find out how the theft was done because I DNF'd this one after about a third of it. Judging the rest of the book from what I did read though, it seems to me that there would have been a perfectly mundane explanation - nothing special or daring. As it was, the part of this book that I could bear to listen to was simply too boring, too slowly moving, and had nothing entertaining to offer me. Appropriately aged readers may disagree, but for me, I can’t recommend this and I will not be reading any more in this series. The characters held nothing for me, being a bunch of spoiled, privileged brats, and the story was too light and lacking in substance.

Some other reviewers have mentioned that this author was or is a writer for Disney and that this book had some Disney-ish aspects to it and I can see that in retrospect, but that wasn't on my mind when I was listening to it. I just didn't find it engaging at all. The characters were unappealing and I cannot recommend it as a worthy read.