00006256

I had mixed feelings about this book after reading it. I liked the story line because it surprised me. Before reading the book, I suspected that it would be full of ideas about how children celebrate Valentine’s Day in school, kind of like an introductory book for young readers about Valentine’s Day. To my surprise, the story was more complex than that; it had a clear beginning, middle, end, as well as an obvious problem and solution. On the contrary, I did not like the author’s use of language at times for the characters’ dialogue because I felt it was unfitting for their age. The summary of the story states that the children in the book are just four years old, but at one point in the story the main character is upset that his crush will not play with him, so he asks his mom to buy his crush a “stupid” store bought valentine. I suspect that in reality, not many parents would allow their four year old children to say such words as stupid, so I was not fond of the author’s choice in using that word to show the boy’s anger. Perhaps, since the author did have the boy say the word stupid to his mom, the mother could have responded by scolding the little boy for saying a bad word. Overall, though, I enjoyed the story and the fact that it was about a young girl and boy’s relationship. The main idea of the story is to teach children about compromise. ( )

This book has just a little too much "drama" for pure minds, in my opinion. Steven Kroll doesn't generally disappoint me though. ( )