2 out of 4 stars
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Dede’s Adventures by Anne Doetschman is a children’s book about a little white bear. The author also drew the illustrations for the eleven stories contained in this collection. Dede lives near the mountains and forest and enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and fishing. He goes on a series of adventures such as the zoo, fishing, and going on a vacation. There is a useful lesson or thought-provoking question contained in each adventure.
Dede is a fun, likeable character that I think young children would enjoy. The individual plots are light-hearted and often include various steps involved in an adventure. I particularly enjoyed Dede’s choice of vacation, the treehouse in the backyard. It’s a place that children would be able to relate to, as opposed to a faraway vacation. The descriptions are vividly written. I could picture the treehouse with the table, bed, and outdoor balcony.
The artwork is colorful and appealing, depicting a bear that is drawn like a bear/little boy wearing human clothing. The pictures of Dede’s activities would inspire children to use their imagination when playing with toys.
The writing style is sometimes confusing. There are switches between third person narration and comments that are directed to the reader, such as “Where do you think that is?” and “Do you like going on vacation?” These asides in the middle of the text interrupt the flow and make the plot difficult to follow at times. It’s as if a parent stopped and asked a child a question or two in the middle of reading a story aloud.
While the book was entertaining, the formatting could use improvement. Each story is told in its entirety on one page, with one accompanying illustration. There are several paragraphs of text with different steps and settings related to the particular event. In “Dede Goes to the Zoo,” one page includes several actions and settings before Dede arrives at the zoo. All of this text is next to one picture of Dede at the zoo. In “Dede Goes Fishing,” the page includes Dede’s preparations the day before the fishing trip and various steps on the day of the outing. The only illustration for these activities is Dede fishing at the lake. This format seems ill-suited for younger children. They may be overwhelmed with too many actions and settings on one page, with only one picture. If each story was separated into a few pages, the illustrations might reflect a better match with the plot.
The font is extremely small and might not appeal to young children. Although the book’s length is listed as 26 pages, the small font makes it feel like a book at least twice that long. The title of each adventure is also written in the same, small font, although highlighted in bold. There are also other lines bolded within each adventure. Since only the first word in each of the titles is capitalized, there is nothing to distinguish it from the other bolded lines in the stories. It would have been clearer if each title had been displayed in a larger font or, at the very least, capitalized.
There are several errors in this short book. The most glaring one is that the identical story is printed twice in succession under two different titles, “Dede Finds a Squirrel” and “Dede, the Most Courageous Bear in the World” and different illustrations. Based on the second title and accompanying picture, one can assume there is a missing story that belongs in place of the duplicate squirrel adventure. There are also a few instances of incorrect word usage (for example, “seat” instead of “sit” and “new” instead of “knew”) and one line of dialogue written with incorrect structure.
I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. There is much potential here, but a bit of polishing and editing is needed. I also wonder if the content would have worked better as individual short books within a series, instead of one page of long text with one illustration each. I would recommend this book to young children ages 2 through 6, certainly those who own well-loved stuffed bears.
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Dede's Adventures
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