Counting to Ten and Sharing My Easter Eggs by David Chuka

Rating: WORTHY!

Okay, so I lied! Here's another book about Easter. The print version evidently comes with a free coloring book, which is always great whether you're a kid or not. Come on, don't tell me you've never colored a page in a kids book somewhere or other. It's been a while since I did one, so I'll get right on that as soon as I'm done here. Unfortunately there is nothing extra with the ebook, not even an Easter egg.

This is the third of David Chuka's books for kids that I've reviewed. I didn't like I Love my Dog which I reviewed in decmeber of 2015, but I did like I Love Baby Animals which I reviewed in August of that year, so now he's batting a .666, which is an interesting number with Easter on the horizon!

This book is refreshingly diverse, although there are so many people of color that you can scarcely see any pale faces in there, which is overdoing it a bit. The way to set things straight isn't to swing the pendulum way over to the other side, but to stop it in the middle and leave it there, otherwise it's only going to swing right back and hit you in the face! That said, this book was a delight.

Mom has, perhaps unwisely, given this little girl a basket of Easter eggs to share with her friends, but bless her little cotton Easter bunny, she does indeed share them, and counts them out as she goes. There is a math formula for adding sequential numbers:

Sum from 1 to n =	n(n + 1)
	2

but this may be a bit advanced for this audience! Substituting 10 for n above though, gives us 55. FIFTY FIVE EGGS?!!! I want some!

The story pursues her distribution of all of those yummy eggs, with colorful pictures and simple rhymes, encouraging children to read it over and count along. If you have some eggs to hand - plastic, hard boiled, or even small toys or Lego's or something, you can distribute then the same way among your kid's plush teddy bears and other cuddly toys. I think this is a charming way to teach counting. But for goodness sake, don't forget to brush afterwards!

I Love my Dog by David Chuka

Rating: WARTY!

From the auhtor of such literary efforts as Billy and the Monster who Loved to Fart and Billy and Monster: The Superhero with Fart Powers comes yet another disaster: a book about dogs (and yes, there are fart jokes in this book). Two kids, boy and girl, are excited to go find their first pet dog, but never once is the animal pound considered. All the dogs featured here are so-called "pure bred". The first dog is an Alaskan Malamute, and though the story is initially narrated by the sister, when we meet the dog, it describes its own role, but it says, "Do you know man still uses me as a sled dog...." I think a gender -neutral word would have been better, as in "Do you know that people still use me as a sled dog...." There's no reason at all to imply that only men can do this. Not in a year when we're newly celebrating the fact that the US finally wised-up and let women have their run of the army!

We also meet a Schnauzer (and yes, the name does come from snout, but it refers to the dog looking like it has a moustache!), an old English Sheepdog, a Poodle (the second most intelligent breed of dog, believe it or not), Dalmatian, Collie, Greyhound, Dachshund, Cocker Spaniel, Great Dane, Saint Bernard, Golden Retriever, and several others.

We learn only a very small amount about each dog, and while we do learn a bit about the down side of dog ownership, we don't learn anything, really, about what is potentially the most important thing about these 'pure bred' dogs, which is that inbreeding leads to awful deficits in too many of these animals. These problems range from, for example, deafness and hyperuricemia in the Dalmatian, to heart disease in the Boxer, to hip dysplasia in the German shepherd, to breathing problems in bulldogs, and other issues, such as mitral valve disease in the King Charles Spaniel (although this dog is not featured in this book).

I would have preferred a book that mentioned the options available and talked more about how much care, attention, and outright love a pet needs, as well as what it costs in buying the dog in the first place, and then in ongoing outlay for food, toys, bedding, and vet bills for routine visits alone. I can't recommend this book because it lacks far too much important information and kids deserve so much better.

I Love Baby Animals by David Chuka

Rating: WORTHY!

Who doesn't love baby animals? The author requests a review if the reader liked the book, and I'm happy to oblige with a positive one for this picture book, but he says such reviews will encourage him to write some more great stories. My only problem with that - while I do hope he does write some great stories for children - is that this isn't a story. It's a picture book of baby animals, and there's nothing wrong with that. Kids will love it. I did.

The animals are adorable. Even the pink snakelet looks charming, no matter what it might grow into - which reminds me that it would have been nice to know which snake this was. Most of the other animals get identified pretty well, but some are referred to in rather vague terms: the snakelet without identifying the specific snake; the tadpole without identifying which frog it is.

There's obviously some class-warfare going on here, with the mammals being identified down to the species, pretty much, but reptiles and amphibians being described in much more generic terms. Naturally in a young children's picture book, you don't really want to get deeply into scientific data down to the Latin genus and species name (although it might have been nice for adults, especially if they wanted to look up the species and teach their children more about it), but giving the common name of the species is reasonable, especially if it's a really fun name. In that way children understand that nature is complex, and that there isn't just one generic snake, or one frog.

That quibble aside, though, I was impressed that the author didn't take the easy way out and show only cuddly mammals, as all too many children's book authors do. We start with the lion, but we get an alligator next, and then a duckling, so that's three of the five major vertebrate classes right there. Later we get the frog, covering a fourth, but fish are omitted. We get a dog and a cat, which are pretty much required in a book like this(!), but we also get an insect (butterfly), which is commendable. It would have been nice to have a fish and a representative of the invertebrates (other than the insects).

My favorite, I think, is the hedgehog featured on the cover. I had pet hedgehogs when I was a kid, but there are so many cute-looking babies here that it's hard to be sure the llama or the gorilla isn't edging into first place. I recommend this book for the adorable pictures and the diversity depicted.