Cynthia Rylant is practically the queen of easy readers. This is a lovely hybrid of picture book and chapter book, ideal for when your little reader wants to be reading chapter books but isn’t there yet. It’s illustrated by Mark Teague, which means it’s also full of adorable animals.
Poppleton stars in his own series, but this is the very first of his books. It’s a series of largely unrelated stories. From one perspective, this is great, because you can read one and walk away. However, if you prefer to read straight through, it does seem a bit disjointed. The first story is about friendship and being overly polite, but its real value is in the fact that Poppleton, despite being a pig, and ahem, pig-sized, has a lot of really good and worthwhile hobbies, including jogging and other physical tasks. This is great because it shows that size does not necessarily come from sloth. The second story is about how much he loves the library, which is always lovely. The third story was my least favorite, in part because it was about having to hide medicine from the person taking it and in part because it ends with Poppleton and his goat friend laying in bed pretending to be sick and swilling down cakes. Come on Poppleton! You’d been such a good role model up until then!!
Sex, Nudity, Dating – Poppleton is generally clad from the waist up, but not from the waist down.
Profanity – None.
Death, Violence and Gore – None.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – In the final story, Poppleton’s friend is sick and must take a pill, which he requests be hidden in a cake. By the end, Poppleton decides that he too is sick and must take pills and eat cake. I’m fairly uncomfortable with the self-dispensing of medication (the book says they took a lot of pills and ate a lot of cake).
Frightening or Intense Things – None.
