Life Skills

EducatingParents.org rating: Approved

This book is about little critter who gets lost in a crowd and because of his bravery is soon reunited with his family. It teaches kids to always stay with people they know but it also teaches them how to ask certain strangers like policemen, security guards and etc for help ( )

In this Little Critter outing, Little Critter is on a trip at the mall with his mom and two siblings. The place is packed, and Little Critter tries to stay close to his mom so he won't get lost, but when he bends down to tie his shoe, the crowd swallows him up. Fortunately, Little Critter knows what to do. He is brave. He asks a store clerk for help, who calls a security guard. With the aid of these responsible adults, Little Critter is soon reunited with his family.

Many children's books are topical stories meant to teach children a specific life lesson. In this book, the message is clearly about the right steps to take if a child ever faces the scary situation of being lost. Young readers will take comfort in seeing a familiar friend facing the problem with composure and success. The illustrations are in the same cute vein as other books in the series, although less detailed, probably because it is one of the later books. Also, the story is simpler. The writing is clean and direct, but it lacks a lot of the charm and underlying humor of earlier books. The closest narrative approach to original stores was Little Critter's explanation that he needed to find his mom because she was probably scared, when we all knew that he was the scared one. The rest of the story, though, was just a simple exposition of what happened while the security guards found his mom. In other words, it was a perfectly adequate story, not as good as other Little Critter stories, but earning an extra half star for teaching a valuable lesson. ( )

My nieces and I really like the Little Critter books.

They're short, they're funny, they're topical, and they're cheap.

This details what happens to Little Critter when he - I mean, his *mother* - gets lost.

He does exactly what I would have done at his age, what I was told to do - he finds somebody in a store, eats a snack, and has his mother paged.

Perfectly sensible, and everybody gets found. ( )