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Rating:  - charming
This is a charming companion to SOMEDAY; although less tender and wistful. Hey, it's for the guys, after all.
Rating:  - Baby gift
I purchased this title on a whim when a very dear friend of mine and his wife had their first child, a little boy. It just seemed right. I wasn't disappointed. It's a delightful story about a "little boy" and what's important to him. Of all his toys--the big cardboard box--and what parent doesn't understand that?
Rating: - Captured the joy of boys
Charming book that the mothers and fathers of boys should read and share with their growing sons.
Rating:  - not for children
This Father's Day, when a Hallmark just won't cut it but $20 seems like too much to spend, why not give this little gem?
Generously borrowing from William Carlos William's poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," each of the rhymed sections in this picture book begins with the phrase "Little Boy, so much depends on..." to inventory the innocent mischief, imaginative play, and rituals of what it means to be a boy. All that and a big cardboard box. Reynolds illustrations are as precious as McGhee's cadences are measured, which is to say they are calculated with great care.
This is the father-and-son companion to Someday, the book about the mother-daughter bond that reads like a snake eating its own tail. With both books I can't imagine what sort of child they are intended for. Grown children? Adults with children who want an American Greeting Card memory of a time that never really existed except in a post-martini haze? New parents who don't realize the fantasy this represents? Seriously, with Little Boy I can see maybe half a reading of this before the little boy being read to wants to go find a cardboard box of his own to play with rather than finish this non-story.
Beyond that, the book is a keepsake, a contemporary Norman Rockwell portrait of boyhood. Grandparents will love it, so might some new parents, but it's not for children.
Rating:  - A bit akward.
I have to admit when I read this book, I found it hard to follow and akward. I loved their first book "Someday" I thought it was beautifully written and the plain prose was still poignant. However I feel like this book was written to ride on the coat tails of their last success. I tried reading it to my daughter and the choppy wording turned her off right away. Although the concept is sweet I wouldn't recommend it for reading aloud.
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