Alex Beard (1)

You know, I would have enjoyed this so much had it not been for the way each and every animal in the book was gendered male. In a book about endangered species, it made me think maybe the species are endangered because they have no females!!!![return][return]So, the distracting sexism and the need to re-gender half the animals while I was reading kind of undercut the otherwise useful message. [return][return]Still I give it a 3 for what it was and bump it another half star to 3.5 because of the use of humor at the end, and the happy ending that happened anyway, and the afterward about the status of the various species.… (mehr)

OK, this one I'll try to be objective. The illustrations are great. This is a morality tale of an evil, blowhard, lazy, lying warthog who becomes king by hoodwinking half the animals into picking an incompetent animal as king. Considering the publisher states the author focuses on real life social issues, I don't think it is a huge stretch to say the book is about Trump, even though they advertise it as being about the boardroom, because otherwise the story doesn't work alone like an Aesop's fable does. If all the animals were tricked into picking the warthog as king, the tale would have, but only half the animals were tricked, so the point of the book seems to be the warthog is evil and half the animals are ignorant. If it was about a boardroom, the tricked people would have been jockeying for power, not just tricked.

I appreciate all the effort made for this book. It definitely speaks to half the population and is a great way to explain how half the population sees Trump in a very easy to digest way. It is definitely worth reading whatever side of the aisle you are on.… (mehr)