Customer Reviews

Lizards for Lunch: A Roadrunners Tale

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

 

 

Told in rhythmic verse and containing wonderful water color illustrations of desert nature scenes, this book introduces many facts about roadrunners in a way that children will love and not soon forget. My 8-year old loves this book, and so do I!

My kids (3 and 5) love this book! They don't have many other books that make them laugh so consistently (and teach them wonderful things at the same time). Storad and Atwood have hit upon a great combination of entertainment and education where the desert is concerned!

We sure are sorry to write a less than thrilled review for a book that looked and sounded so good. Our 3-year old daughter was really looking forward to receiving this book and, possibly, taking it to share with her class for "desert" week. We love roadrunners; she's had a stuffed one from a trip to AZ since she was less than a year old.

This book was so disappointing. The photos are scary on a majority of pages: boldly colored, large, wide-open mouthed roadrunners with bugged eyes chasing wildly after bugs and lizards. The story itself is about roadrunners often settling for non-lizard meals, but craving and madly pursuing lizards to eat.

Theme aside, the story itself could track so much better from page spread to page spread. The authors tried to do too much. The theme of roadrunners hotly pursuing frightened lizards and bugs to eat is interrupted with pages here and there about the physical description and vocalizations of roadrunners. The result is a badly disjointed story line. Even the "chorus" does not flow with rhymes on preceding or subsequent page spreads.

We did like the rhymes in the book, but they are almost entirely overshadowed by the poor flow of the story and the frightening pictures. The book is absolutely not worth purchasing for the rhymes alone (they are not that consisent or good). The book could be so much better if it either stuck only to the theme of "what roadrunners eat" OR (in our opinion a better choice) "all about roadrunners".

we live in the arizona desert and have grandchildren in other states. i am trying to show them the wonderful creatures who live around us and let them learn about each one. we have given these bright kids many stuffed replicas of our desert neighbors and then added appropriate age books to complete their understanding. this was the perfect addition to a very life-like stuffed roadrunner we gave to a seven year old. she cuddles with the animal while her dad reads her the book. when they come to see us she is always anxious to see the desert fauna...no fear and with a basic understanding of who these creatures are.