I’ve gotten serious about finishing the BBC’s Top 100 Children’s Books list. I ordered a slew of books from Amazon, Better World Books, and the library. I don’t have quite all the unread books from the list in my possession, but I have a good number of them, leaving me with lots of flexibility about the order in which to read them. I decided to start with the shortest one, a picture book which I borrowed from the library. Reading it brings my total of finished books to 65\/100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ernest and Celestine<\/em> by Gabrielle Vincent, Grade: C+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Children’s books are supposed to be easy reads, but I found this one sort of puzzling. I got off to a bad start, because the pictures didn’t make it clear to me who was speaking. Once I sorted out who was who, the plot was simple enough to follow. It goes like this: Celeste loses her toy bird and Ernest tries to replace it for her. But why is Celeste (who looks to be a young mouse) living with Ernest, who is presumably not her father (since she calls him by name) and who appears to be a grown but relatively small (by comparison) bear? I would have appreciated some additional context, but I’m not the intended audience, so take my puzzlement and harsh grade with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve gotten serious about finishing the BBC’s Top 100 Children’s Books list. I ordered a slew of books from Amazon, Better World Books, and the library. I don’t have quite all the unread books from the list in my possession, … Continue reading