Thursday, January 02, 2014

Book Review




Because Goodreads doesn't list it:

Cheepy Chick's Holiday by ... someone at Brimax Books. Amazon lists the author as Lucy Kincaid but our catalog says June Woodman.

There's something about this that makes me read it as "Creepy" Chick's Holiday. And every time I see "Cheepy" it comes across as "Creepy." This is a large-print children's book aimed at early readers, ages 4 to 7 years. While the print is very large, it is also very close together, causing even someone with my middle-aged eyes to hold it at a distance.
Creepy - sorry, Cheepy Chick is a small business owner who is worn to a frazzle by annoying customers who come to her shop and can't make up their tiny minds. C...Cr...Cheepy Chick's shop is not ergonomically organized. She needs to climb a ladder to get to the sweets she sells in her shop. The sweets have the inviting names of "brown" and "pink" and "white." One is unable to tell even from the illustrations what these might be. They appear to be cookies/biscuits of some sort. Given the state of the bakery arts of today, they probably don't have any real flavor other than "brown" or "pink" or "white."
At the end of the day, Ch-Cr ... Cheepy Chick is so exhausted that she is willing to turn the running of the shop over to her friends, Polly Pig, Bob Hedgehog, and the appropriately but not that cleverly named "Little" Hamster so she can take some much-needed time off.
Away she goes on a skiing vacation where, after a few spills, she is taught to ski properly by Pat Penguin, the ski instructor. She send her friends a postcard. After she returns, business has fallen off so much that she has to remove the cobwebs from the shelves, which she seems happy to do.
The moral of this story is, to the best of my reckoning: Take a vacation.
Things I don't understand:

  • Why ... the chick person keeps all her popular items on upper shelves when she clearly has nothing on the lower ones. 
  • Why her sweets aren't more descriptive. 
  • How the shop got so dirty/cobweb-riddled while she was away although her friends are clearly cleaning the place as she's leaving. How long was she gone?
  • Why the author dropped the ball in developing a relationship between our heroine and, say, the ski instructor or the dog on the train. 
  • How far away she has to travel to go from apple time and green grass where she lives (September?) to full-blown snow. Is this California where you can sell your sweets in the morning and then nip up to the mountains to go skiing in the afternoon?
  • Does she spend the night somewhere? Did she go clubbing? Baby seal clubbing?
  • As attuned to sweets as young children might be, wouldn't they need something more to go on than just color description? 
All in all, I was unimpressed with the plot and the characterization in this oeuvre. I am considering discarding it instead of replacing the spine label, which has come off.