On the last page, she is sitting on the edge of a pond, surrounded by animals that are just chilling with her. It's kind of weird and looks disturbing, because she's maybe 6 or 8 years old, without supervision, next to a snake... Who knows what other creatures could be lurking in the bushes other than that fawn? Bears? Foxes? Something dangerous could be out there.

It's a really sweet message, but to get there they had to jump through so many hoops and pad the book with so many unrelated things like baking cakes and dances and accordion music. The story just meanders before it gets there. It's not a bad story; it just doesn't go anywhere.

The main character is a jerk, and the main character gets karma. Maybe children like this kind of sociopathic protagonist and the ensuing comeuppance.

Why do stories where the clever person wins always seem to end up with the clever person lying, and the other person being phenomenally stupid?? Why does a trickster have to completely, full-on, lie? There's nothing clever about lying to an idiot.

It's kind of boring and really wordy for a little kid. It's interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but it's not gripping enough for a young child.

There's no real story, just a series of events that happen when she visits her grandparents. It's kind of boring. I'm really not sure how something this banal came from the same author as The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line, both fascinatingly weird stories.

It's kind of bad in that it turns out that none of them are really correct about the moon. It is super big and super far away, and they couldn't have really gotten it for him, but I think the real message is that everybody's opinion is equally important, even children.

Nothing like this would be written today. It's just so a product of its time. Even back then, I think the message was: If your family is abusive to you, suck it up because home is where you belong. Nobody would write a book with that message nowadays!

It's an autobiographical story. The author says he was about 4 or 5 when the map was first bought, and eventually he became a well-respected children's illustrator and writer.

It's kind of nice in that it's the story of a male authority figure performing the typically "motherly" task of putting a child to sleep. And this is very easily relatable, with nothing explicitly saying that Big is Little's father, or grandfather, or uncle, or anything specific. But because it's so generic, there's not much to it. Basically, the kid keeps telling the adult, "I love you this much," and the adult keeps responding, "Well, I love you this much," and it's always more.