Customer Reviews

Dance at Grandpa's (My First Little House)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My 2-year-old daughter loves this series (My First Little House Books). Dance at Grandpa's was her first and still her favorite. At 2, she is already fascinated by Laura, Mary, Pa, and Ma and their lives...just as I was by reading the Little House series when I was older. Dance at Grandpa's is a wonderful story with beautiful illustrations. I highly recommend it (and the other books) to all parents!

Dance at Grandpa's, and ALL the "My First Little House Books", are wonderful! They've been a great way to get my pre-schooler interested in American history. She can really identify with the characters, and is fascinated by how life was different in "the old days".

As a family, we read the Little House series over the summer -- me reading out loud to the kids.

On a recent trip to the library, we were hanging out in the W's and found this illustrated series. The easy text and full-page illustrations make it perfect for younger kids, not yet ready for chapter books but beyond early readers.

Nice for my youngest to go through these as a reminder of last summer's reading.

My daughter has loved this book since age 3 and she is now 6. My other daughter loves it and she is not quite 2. This book has full page illustrations which I think is what engages them. I just love reading them stories that take place in a different time. This is a great series of books and I plan to purchase more from it.

I have already read most of the Little House books to my daughter (now aged 6). She has enjoyed the stories, but like most children her age, she is very visual. This book captures her attention in a way that the original stories could not, through the beautiful pictures. (The artwork is very similar to the artwork found in our edition of the Little House books.) In addition, she can read the words! This fact gives her a lot of confidence, as Little House stories are 'big kid' stories.

We play a game in which I will read each sentence but change the last word to something that would not make sense (example: Mars or airplane). She laughs, tells me I am wrong, and then correctly reads the word to which I am pointing. She loves this game. It results in a low-stress opportunity for us to read as a team.

If I had found this book when my daughter was younger (say, 3), I think that she still would have liked the book, even though she would not have have known Mary, Laura, and the other Ingalls.

FYI... One reviewer comments that the story lacks conflict; she is absolutely correct. The source book for this story (Little House in the Big Woods) also lacks genuine conflict, except for some conflict with wild animals. I think that this cozy view of frontier family life is educational and reassuring for young children.

I'm reading the full Little House series to my 6-year-old, and my 3-year-old felt very left out. This book is perfect for her. It gives some of the sense of Little House, giving an entry to talking about the era and how it differs from now. And she really likes it.
But it doesn't draw you in much -- you don't get any sense of the characters and it misses the beautiful details of the full Little House books.

These are great little books (there are several in the series). These are adaptations of the Little House books, formatted as picture books with full color illutrations that are inspired by Garth Williams original Little House artwork. Dance at Grandpa's is an abbreviated excerpt from the Ingalls Wilder novel Little House in the Big Wood. The fun pictures and straitforward text present the incident of a dance and celebration at Grandpa Ingalls' cabin - quite a story as presented in the original novel and adapted well here. The essential elements are presented here with perfectly matched illustrations. One of those books that you hope your kids will choose for you to read at bedtime

It's almost magic, the way my daughter is fascinated by these First Little House books ...all of them, all the time. The illustrations are a delight, and prompt her to pointing, and naming the different kinds of animals, as well as "Pa," "Ma," and "Jack" the bulldog. The text is simple, but holds up under repeated readings, and keeps my two-year old captivated. DANCE AT GRANDPA'S, is a nice example of this picture book series, which captures the spirit of Wilder's chapter books in a way that can delight a very young audience. This book, and all we've read from the series, is well worth having on the shelf.

I have to admit that my daughter loves these books. But I think they are much less than they could have been. The illustrations are attractive but have no dramatic power and no personality. All the people look the same. The stories reveal no individuality in the characters. Everyone gets along and behaves well, and no desires conflict. I think the idyllic quality is part of what appeals to my daughter, but I think she also enjoys seeing some details of how people lived in a very different time.