How true is the story that he had three gingerbread men and gave two of them to a demanding little fat boy? It's weird, and I'm not sure what it implies.

I guess it's a nursery rhyme. It's a very meandering hypothetical that doesn't go anywhere or have any kind of relation to reality. Everything about this book is weird.

Despite winning a Caldecott Honor, this book is far too long and wordy to read to a child. It's 96 pages long, and the illustrations are mostly in the margins. This is really a novella-length biography, not a picture book. So it's not just wordy, but very long.

Basically, the clam is in trouble, doesn't listen to anybody else, and then suddenly develops supernatural powers to get himself out of the situation. If that's not a deus ex machina, I don't know what is. But everybody's okay! Nobody dies!

This is the weirdest, most surreal book. After some antics with cake and raisins, you're supposed to look through the telescope backwards so the elephant is tiny, and then pick it up with the tweezers. And that's it. Okay...? It's basically a long, drawn-out illustration of a surreal joke.

I wanted to like it, but it ended up being formulaic and irritating. The whole thing is either taking pictures of common things from an unexpected angle or pictures of uncommon things and saying, "Hey! This looks kind of like something totally different! But it's not! Psych!"

The text kind of seems like something a little kid would say, and that's probably what he's going for as an author. But since it's all pictures of him, it makes it seem a lot more egotistical than it has to be.

It's definitely not aimed at little enough kids that you would read to. It's a good book, but not really for the target audience I review books for. I don't think they would understand it, but it wouldn't warp their fragile little minds or anything.

I'd say the quality is comparable to Dr. Seuss's ABCs, but with no nonsense words. Everything's pretty straightforward, with things that kids-- of the time-- would actually encounter. Some things that kids would still encounter. But you know, there's not a lot of organ grinders nowadays.

It's interesting, but definitely not a modern-style kids book. It's not a bad message and wouldn't upset a child, but it's too long. And it's not popular nowadays to like clowns.