Customer Reviews

The One and Only Me (Harper Growing Tree)

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This delightful book imparts an essential truth to little ones in just two lines per page, 24 pages in all. Each double page spread features the main character with another family member, and in rhyme, relates the feature or body part that they have in common. "When I sing songs with Uncle Keith, Aunt Lil declares I've got his teeth." Toddlers will especially love guessing the rhyming feature if given the chance. The illustrations are detailed enough to give a clue as to the feature of similarity as well. After detailing how much like all her family members the little girl is, the book finishes with the girl looking in the mirror and the text "But looking at my family, I know just what I see, I may have a bit of everyone, but they all add up to me." The last spread is a family portrait and the line "Completely, uniquely, definately, specially, the one and only ME!"

It's a sweet enough story, but my problem is that this is supposed to be a book to help teach kids how to read. Yet on EVERY SINGLE PAGE, the phrase "I've got" is used when "I have" would be grammatically more precise. Also, a picky point: the author rhymes "engineers" and "ears." Sorry, but "eers" and "ears" don't rhyme; they're the SAME SOUND. If we're going to teach kids to read and, eventually, to write, we need to give them good examples, not sloppy ones.