Friday, June 19, 2015

Book Reviewer: Papa Gave Me a Stick by Janice Levy

When I saw this one on *Netgalley I fell in love with the cover and thought that the book summary sounded interesting. I live in a neighborhood where it is not uncommon to see a mariachi band walk by so I thought this would be a nice book for my son.

The book tells the story of a little boy who wants a guitar so badly after he sees a mariachi band playing. He lets his father know how much he wants one but his father instead hands him a stick. The boy is unhappy and wonders what good is a stick. Soon he finds a dog and trades the stick. He keeps trading and trading each time he asks what good is the item he gets.

Ok so I kind of chuckled when the father gave him a stick and quite honestly I could hear Charlie Brown saying, "I got a rock". I liked that the lesson of this is that sometimes you have to work to get what you want. He had to keep trading and trading to get his guitar. What I didn't like was that each time he complained about what he got. I understand that he really wanted the guitar but he came off as a bit ungrateful.

As many know I'm a huge fan of artwork in picture books. This book was filled with wonderful drawings. This was one that I went back to look through all the artwork a second time.

My son liked this one. He picked up right away that there were Spanish words in it. Though to be fair to him there are only two languages English (or american as he calls it) and Spanish. He doesn't know any Spanish. He was excited to learn the word for cat in Spanish though he kept forgetting two seconds later and would ask me yet again to tell him it. I thought this was a great opportunity to teach him a few Spanish words.

In the end I have to give this 4 out of 5. I'm knocking off one star just because I didn't like that he seemed ungrateful sometimes.


*I received a free copy of this ebook from Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion
**This book was read with my special needs son who is severely learning disabled. The review reflects not only my opinion but his as well

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