WRITING CHILDREN’S BOOK REVIEWS

A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Storyline in Different Literary Genres and Literary Modes

Writing Leap #22   Writing Children’s Book Reviews

Hi Writers,

I can’t stop writing about Paris.  This time it’s a children’s picture book review.  I found this book hustling around the Book Expo in New York last week.  Two days of books here, books there, books books everywhere.  For writers, readers, booksellers and bookbuyers it’s exciting if not exhausting.

A few thoughts on writing children’s book reviews.  First of all, for writers it’s good practice in putting yourself in the sensibilities of a child as well as the sensibilities of a parent.  Will children enjoy this and understand it?  Will their moms enjoy this and approve of it?  Do the illustrations and the text enhance each other?  And then just write what you think and feel about the book.  No giving away the endings!  If there is one.

Story Line

Discovery!

So writers go ahead and try a book review.  It’s a great way to analyze what you are reading.

Here’s mine.

Bella and Harry

What could be more fun than dashing around Paris on the heels of two little Chihuahuas?  Bella and her younger brother Harry lead the picture book crowd from the Eiffel Tower to a bistro where they dive into baguettes and crêpes and all the way to the Champs Elysées and the crazy traffic around the Arc de Triomphe.

In Bella and Harry  Let’s Visit Paris, written by Lisa Manzione and illustrated by Kristine Lucco, Bella, a Chihuahua authority on all things Parisian, tells Harry the Eiffel Tower is 986 feet high–as high as fifty giraffes stacked on each other.  The illustration of the tall tower and the high stretch of giraffes blends seamlessly with the text, as do all the lively illustrations.

Harry gets lost in the Louvre Museum and fears the eyes of Rembrandt’s Mona Lisa are surely following him around.

Finding themselves in a dark tunnel Bella and Harry emerge under the Arc de Triomphe and wonder at the fast, whizzing traffic surrounding them.  Bella informs Harry (who is always eager to be informed) that the Arc de Triomphe was built “to welcome soldiers home from long journeys and thank them for a job well done!”

Bella and Harry  Let’s Visit Paris is part of a picture book series of ten “Let’s Visit” books with more to come.   The Chihuahuas (and their author) travel to such places as Rome, London, Istanbul and Jerusalem.

This award winning series will please all parents who would like their children to become aware of differences in cultures.  And children will surely love traveling with two irresistible Chihuahuas.  Where else will they learn that Parisians dunk their bread in their hot chocolate?

More information:  BellaAndHarry.com

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Enjoy your creativity writers,

LINKING THE ARTS

A Good Word      

Wonder     As in a child’s fresh sense of his world

                                         Another way to dunk bread into hot chocolate