3 out of 4 stars
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Puffy and the Formidable Foe is a short children's book that not only encourages children to read, but offers a more interactive experience than most books in the form of a coloring page and several suggestions for how parents/teachers and children can use the book to learn. It deliberately uses words that children may not be familiar with in an effort to expand their vocabulary, and by and large it works well.
It's told in the form of rhyming couplets (generally one rhyme to each page, although some stretch over two pages) and is the story about a cat who goes out looking for a rat, but instead finds a skunk and...yeah, you can probably guess what happens next. There are a few pages where the rhymes don't scan properly, but by and large it isn't a problem and the language is age appropriate for young children. There's no target audience, but very young children may struggle a little with the narration-heavy style of storytelling, and even with adult guidance might find some of the words a little difficult.
Rhyming words are underlined, something which strikes me as unnecessary but it doesn't detract from the book as a whole. Some make little sense and seem as though they were put in purely to rhyme, such as the odor that "will mess up your hair".
The pictures are appropriate to the story but look like they've been drawn by the intended child audience (which I believe was the creators' intention). While I found them charming, children's books tend to feature very bright, vibrant pictures and so these images might fall a little flat. The title could have been slightly more explicit; maybe Puffy the Cat and the Formidable Foe would have been better, but this is a very minor nitpick.
The coloring page at the end of the book is a clever idea and one that I think more children's books should implement. I feel like the authors went slightly over the top when it came to new words though; as someone who has worked with young children, I'm not sure how many would have the patience to listen to a story which has to constantly be interrupted for this word and that to be explained.
I rate this book a solid 3 out of 4 stars. It's a clever idea and one that I think the creators could expand upon further, but it feels a bit like they tried to do a little too much which is why I can't rate it any higher.
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Puffy and the Formidable Foe
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Yes, the drawings seriously didn't match up. I had to leave a review on Amazon for this one as well and a lot of the reviewers there were saying the same thing. The couplet thing really did bother me; I read books like this aloud to my friends' kids a lot and there's nothing more distracting than poor rhythms. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine
