E. Kennen

A Story About Finding Yourself, January 22, 2012

When Emmett's cocoon drops from a tree and lands near an ant hill, the king of the ants has a plan for the newcomer. Eventually, Emmett's selflessness allows him to discover his true nature, with heartwarming results.

This is a cute little story, written in picture book format with 1-4 lines of text per page. It should appeal to ages 3-6. Most self-published children's picture books suffer from a lack of illustration. This one almost has the opposite problem - every other page is an illustration (which is great), but some of the illustrations differ from each other so slightly as to seem unnecessary. Despite that, the illustrations are cute, colorful, clear, and appealing… Read more

Flawed but Sweet, January 19, 2012

This is a sweet and simple story about an autistic kid who is nervous about standing up in front of a class. It highlights how important friendship is for everyone, even kids who might seem different on the outside.

If you are looking for a story that expresses the communality between all children, and that highlights autism, then this is a good choice. (If you are looking for a book that educates kids on what autism is, or how autistic children act, then pass this one up.) That being said, there are several issues with the book:

--It has a lot of the problems typical of a self-published work: some spelling and grammatical errors, a bit too much passive voice and… Read more

4.5 Stars - The Best of Books, December 18, 2011

John Adams was short, fat, and talkative. Thomas Jefferson was tall, thin, and quiet. Together, they made an excellent case for American Independence. But when Tom and John couldn't agree whether a weak or strong presidency was better, they had a falling out that spanned their two presidencies and long into their retirements. Would they hold a grudge forever?

This simply yet evocatively written book gives us a fascinating glimpse at a couple of the founding fathers, as well as teaching young readers important lessons about the nature and value of friendship. The book has a short, informative foreword, but I would have really loved an Author's Note at the end providing more of the… Read more