These illustrations are very interesting. The pig they buy is the color of the sky, clouds and all. There's a giant, realistic looking, Stilton cheese. It's... interesting. It's not great, but it's not bad. It's just goofy.

It's kind of like The Ugly Duckling, except that the duck finds her way home before she turns into an adult, and she doesn't get horrendously abused.

It comes across like somebody made this character, Arthur the dog, and wanted to illustrate him in a bunch of locations.

It's rare to get that kind of honesty in a children's book, and it makes the story about the life that Madeline and her Grandpa shared.

Whenever books start down the path of 'it is better to be this type of person than this other type of person,' which this book is very clearly doing, they risk alienating a great deal of people, children and adults alike. I don't like my books to be this judgmental.

It just drags. It's not badly written, but like many old books, it's incredibly wordy and just goes on forever. It seems older than a book written in 1957.

It's just not okay for a book to basically trample over a kid's wishes, especially when it's really a simple thing that he's asking for. She needs to find something else that she can do for him, or with him, that is the equivalent to her of kissing that he at least tolerates, if not enjoys. Does he like gentle kisses? Hugs? High-fives?

Looking at it from the house's standpoint, it's a perfectly reasonable story. It's not great, but not bad. And it's rather dated.

I'm not crazy about this book, but I like the way the idea is presented: both of the characters feeling the same way about each other but being brave or not wanting to get angry. It seems like it would help children understand the concept of empathy, and the idea that 'he's just as scared of you as you are of him.'

It seems like it's trying to say that you need to be nice to people for them to like you back, which is a decent message to have. It kind of reminds me of the book "Grumpy Cat" (not to be confused with the internet superstar).