Author: DC Swain
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Iuliana Iordaschescu (no website found).
Well I'm not sure about the title of this story, but I can't argue with the quality of it and the brilliant colors of the absorbing illustrations conceived by the exotically and amazingly-named Iuliana Iordaschescu.
I did come across one error on page three of the book, where the term "it's" is used. That's a contraction of "it is", which is wrong in this case. It should be "its" with no apostrophe, indicating a beat which belongs to the blue ball. This is, unfortunately, a common error. People tend to add apostrophes where none are needed and omit them where they're required. It's easy to avoid if you 'uncontract' the word and see if it still fits when employed as "it is".
One thing I very much appreciated was the large and simple text. This is for young children, some of whom might be learning to read, and the large and simple text is invaluable. It's also, incidentally, useful for grandparents whose eyesight may be somewhat poorer than average, and who will, I'm sure, appreciate the ready legibility of the text when they come to read it to their grand kids. It's refreshing to find a writer like DC Swain who evidently thinks of these things, and it's especially nice if you're reading this on a so-called smartphone.
This children's story is interesting in that it features no children! All we see is the ball, determinedly and unstoppably bouncing its way into oblivion. That ball has ambition and has no business appearing blue. What's to be sad about? The ball, in my humble opinion, deserved to be red, just as this story deserves to be read.
I found that the highly whimsical nature of the story is what made it most appealing. Typically I look for educational content in children's books, and failing that, I look for something to stir the imagination of the child, some novelty, something of interest, some good fun, or something like those things, to make the story stand out.
This one managed it by how wild and crazy it was, by its uncluttered nature, and by that feisty ball, which to me had a character all of its own as it bounced its way confidently down the high street and out of town on its way to who knows where? Maybe we'll find out in the sequel: Spaceballs? Oh wait, wrong movie! I recommend this story for sheer fun and originality.
In terms of book presentation, I have to add a note about distortions in proportions - of the book layout in the so-called smart phone Kindle app. This is probably a technical issue, but when you read this things in ebook from, they tend to bear little relationship to the print form. Even when the page is an image, as it is in this case, there are issues. You will no doubt note from the images here how the ball is distorted? This was from trying to render the page in the square format of the original book! Clearly the images are differently proportioned on my phone, because when I make them square, the ball isn't a sphere (and neither is the sun in the other review. Of course the sun actually isn't a sphere anyway - not a pure one - but that's by-the-by). This is something which is worth keeping in mind both as a writer and as a reader.
