Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated by Daniel Kirk.
There is one reason and one reason only why I'm reviewing this, which is to show how utterly brainless Kirkus reviews are, and why I have neither time nor respect for anyone who employs their reviews as advertising to promote books.
Kirkus idiotically describes this book as an "utterly modern re-visitation of a classic...". Utterly modern? Let's see what the text says:
- A man was digging a hole....
- The big digger made by a man....
- A man put a train in the hole.... (seriously?!)
- Another train with another man....
Anyone see "woman" in there? No, me neither. And Kirks thinks this is utterly modern. Excuse me while I spit somewhere. I can see how this got away with ignoring women when it was first published, but for it to be republished in this day and age and not a single thought given to updating the text to make it at least gender neutral is a travesty at best and a gross insult at worst.
The purpose of the book is not, as some might think, to introduce readers to Australians, but to introduce kids to all manner of things, living or mechanical, which dig holes. Can you dig it? Aimed not at miners but at minors, we get pictures of mechanical shovels, worms, moles, and so on, and we see to what ends these things dig.
The little book is colorful, with fun drawings. When the author, she of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny was alive, this might have been described as a delightful book for young children. Today it would still have been fine enough had the text been updated, but as it is, I can't recommend this at all. Unfortunately, the author died over half a century ago, at the appallingly youthful age of 42, so she isn't around any more to do the necessary. Maybe a more recent edition to the one that I read takes care of this problem? If there is one, I'd go with that rather than this particular one.
