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Title: Great illustrations, terrible verse
Review: This book has wonderfully bold, creatively designed illustrations which makes it enjoyable to flip through. But the plodding text makes it impossible to read! Cumulative verse can be very fun and effective, but in this book the author made no attempt to create a lyrical "chorus" that kids would be able to chime in on when being read to, or even that adults would be able to read aloud pleasantly. The point of the interconnectedness of life in an ecosystem doesn't come across well in the story alone... only by reading the letter from the author at the beginning and the pages of notes at the end do you get the full picture of what the book is trying to say. I think the concept of the book was great, but it failed miserably in execution, thanks to the poorly written verse.
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