Willie Out West by Rhonda Walker was a children's book I reviewed for the BookSneeze program. Westbow Press E-Books provided me this book for my nook in exchange for an honest review. I am sorry to say I did not enjoy this book, except for some humorous pictures.
This book was obviously geared toward preschool age children but the very first page starts out with Willie the walrus exclaiming to his mom, "I am sick of swimming and playing dumb games." Even though the idea in this story is that Willie changes his attitude after a bazaar dream, his mother just smiles at him in response to his disrespectful attitude. I can totally see little kids mimicking Willie with, "I am sick of doing dumb things."
Willie then has a dream about going to Big West and being a hero. Nice idea but his motives are to "have a story to tell when I return home a hero." While Willie is in "Big West" there is symbolism used about being a "thick-skinned" walrus or a "spineless jellyfish" which would be lost on the kids for which this book was written. And then somehow, because of this dream of defeating the big bad one-eyed ugly whale, Willie started listening to his parents. Huh?
Sorry, Rhonda Walker, one star.
No comments:
Post a Comment