1 out of 4 stars
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Johnnie and Farah are devastated when their tyrannical Auntie Bertie cancels Christmas in favor of throwing her own party – no kids allowed. When sneaky robbers start skulking around the house, can Auntie Bertie and the kids (and the pets of the house!) work together to save the day? Esther Loftus Gough’s Auntie Bertie Bans Christmas is a fun, holiday-themed mystery for kids around the ages of nine to twelve.
The author explains in her biography that she is a professional color therapist. However, the use of color in this book was anything but therapeutic. The very first page is a blinding combination of small black text on a neon fuchsia background. It’s so low-contrast that it’s actually physically difficult to read. The rest of the pages all feature the same black text on a variety of vivid colors. Some, like yellow and powder blue, are a little easier on the eyes. The majority of the pages, though, are colors like dark green, dark red, hot pink, and navy. They certainly caught my eye, but I found myself having to squint to actually read the story. I can’t imagine a little kid being able to get through it easily.
The storyline also has some room for improvement. While the broad strokes of it are charming, full of talking animals and Victorian sensibilities, there was just way too much going on. Besides Auntie Bertie and one of the cats, none of the characters have any personality to them. Johnnie and Farah (ostensibly the main characters) only have a few lines of dialogue. Farah could be entirely removed from the story and I wouldn’t notice a difference. Johnnie has a tiny bit of slap-dash character development, but it’s barely explored.
The first page alone is full of unnecessary details. The reader is told that Johnnie’s mother, Sarah, is having a baby and that his father is picking up Farah’s father, Ash, at the airport – none of which has any bearing on the story. These characters are never mentioned again.
Removing some of the unnecessary characters and unneeded details would do this book wonders. It’d give the author more room to flesh out Johnnie’s character to the point where a reader would actually care about him.
A final note: this book ends with a coloring page. It would be a nice touch for a children’s book, except it’s not actually a coloring page at all. The author simply took one of the illustrations and made it grayscale. Instead of coloring inside the lines, you’d have to color on top of various shades of gray – no fun at all. It’s a strange oversight coming from a color therapist.
Between the painful color choices and the too-busy story, I can’t imagine handing this book to a kid. I rate it 1 out of 4 stars. If I were rating the story alone, I’d be happy to give it two stars, but I can’t recommend a book that’s this hard on the eyes. There’s lots of potential here, but it definitely needs some work.
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Auntie Bertie bans Christmas, rescue cats save the day,
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