Rating: WARTY!
Elissa is such a sweet name isn't it? Iris and Walter, not so much, not for a story published in 2002, and the story, unfortunately, was as sweet as the chaacters' names. How they managed to call this a performance is a mystery. The story was read, not performed. Let's not get pretentious about this! And why on Earth did it need a director? Honestly? Just to give a job to someone from the audio book readsters union, Loco 0? No wonder audio books cost a fortune (although this one is evidently not so expensive).
Normally a CD from an audio book lasts me the round trip to work and back. This one didn't even last half way to work, which was an unexpected event. It was about a failed attempt at a sleepover with these young kids sleeping out on the porch. I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me? Two young kids out alone on the porch?" If this was a fifties children's story, maybe, but this was published quite recently. Do any parents let very young children sleep out alone on the porch in this day and age? Not wise. Not wise at all.
It was weird too, in that about every thirty seconds, there was a ping on the audio, like the one you might hear in an elevator as it passes each floor. I had no idea what that was all about until a friend clued me in to the fact that these are used as markers to indicate when the page is to be turned if you're following along in the print version of the audio book. Thanks Aimee! It's rather like Pavlov's dog-eared books - when it pings, you start salivating for the next page....
Well, there was no print version and no instructions at the start of the disk telling listeners what those pings meant. Maybe the instructions are in the print book. Which wasn't here! But that wasn't what irritated me. The story was simple and simply read, but it's really not very good. The problem is several-fold. The story is extremely short, and it has very little content for one thing. it doens;t evne have an uplifting moral or educational content.
The story is that Iris gets to sleep over at her best friend Walter's house. I like that this was mixed gender. The problem is that Iris gets homesick, and has to be taken home. Is this supposed to convey to us that girls are weak? I don't buy it (I did borrow it form the library, but I returned it!). Is it supposed to show how children don't need a story about bravery, resilience, and self-reliance, but one about cowardice? Cowardice does work well in nature. Animals that run away live to be eaten another day, but to me, children's stories need to be about building confidence, not undermining it. Could the author not have extended the story to show how Iris overcame her fear and had a fun night or came back and faced her demons another day, and successfully stayed over? Why the mixed message that it's wise to sleep out on the porch unsupervised, but it's dangerous to spend the entire night at your friend's house so you should run off home instead?
I can't recommend this story which really lacks substance even for a young children's story, and sends a poor message to young kids.
