I have always had mixed feelings about this book. It is cute (but repetitively so -- the lizards don't do cute things in the book, and the rectangles are less convincingly personified than the letters in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom). There is a good message about the futility of war. But the whole thing is not memorable due to bland narration. ( )

This book is really awesome. The bold colours kill me, and the fact that we don't even know why or how this war started - and the one lizard who dared to ask was squished. He became a martyr, presumably, causing the war to escalate, until only a few pages later when peace is brokered. Would peace have happened anyway? Did that one lizard give his life to speed up the end of the war, or was it a senseless death?

After all these thoughts, I noticed the back endpapers included a lizard with a bandage on...and it turns out, this is the same squashed lizard who appears on every page after the squashing sporting a bandage. So, no one had to die! That's good. Also, the endpaper shows a budding romance between this lizard and a lucky red rectangle, so obviously whatever prejudices they were harboring during the war were quickly forgotten after the peace treaty. Unless this is a long-term romance that they are only now allowed to pursue publicly! Maybe this is how the war started in the first place, and the lizard's cry of "What are we fighting for?" is actually a plea for lenience and understanding.

There are a lot of layers to this book. ( )

The green lizards and red rectangles were fighting a war and didn't even understand why. Finally with end in sight they realized maybe a truce was needed. So they found a way to live happily ever after and it is the cutest way (read to find out). ( )

Found it a little unsatisfactory that the green lizards could never possibly win against the rectangles as they just feel so invulnerable and immoveable - how could they ever make an impact so a very one sided war. This may have been intentional though!
The ending where the rectangles have made homes for the lizards also felt a little one sided - surely the lizards have the best out of this peace deal?
A good way to tackle a big topic though. ( )

This was a fun book about lizards being at war with red rectangles. They solve the war by learning to live together. ( )