Charlotte Zolotow Award Honor

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 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 kind of requires a little bit of mental gymnastics to get to that point, otherwise it basically ends up with the message of, "Everybody is an idiot."

It's just kids having fun together and making something bigger than they are and playing with it, and having fun with their imaginations.

It's pretty. It's not a bad book, it's just there's no real message to it. It's just telling the story of something that happened to these people.

The book is written in prose poetry, and the language is very supportive of all feelings being acceptable as long as nobody gets hurt. It's okay to enjoy time to yourself as well as enjoying being with others. Sometimes your family members are kind of jerky to you, especially siblings, but they still love you anyway.

Of course, she falls asleep, but it's very nice how the parents give her the option as long as she stays in bed. Which is a reasonable thing to do for kids, and matches well with my parenting style. It's very well written and doesn't have a strong message but the message it has is good.

It's kind of unusual, with pages that fold out in different directions. The artwork is very charming. There's not a lot to it, but it's the kind of repetitive that is endearing rather than mind-numbing.

I guess it's for a little, little, kid. But it is boring. So boring. It doesn't have very many words, but they're very repetitive.

The kid being obsessed with something like that is very realistic, especially nighttime rituals, but the girl is demanding something that doesn't exist.