Welcome to Book Reviews: 1st Edition. Starting this week, every Tuesday, I will be reviewing a new book or books. While some of them will be full length chapter books, there will be a lot of children’s books that I will review here. When I review children’s books, I will review more than one.
First Win: How Friendship and a Bit of Kindness Makes Every Team Stronger
The first book I read First Win: How Friendship and a Bit of Kindness Makes Every Team Stronger. First Win is written by Ricky R. Jimenez. The story description claims that this is a story about friendship and kindness, but in my opinion, it falls short on this promise. What this book is, is a play by play of a soccer game. The protagonist wins and invites the opposing team player that had ‘teased’ him out for ice cream, who then apologizes.
There are all of three or four sentences that live up to the theme, while the rest of the book just describes the game. What the story doesn’t do, is give us a reason to care about the characters. I would have liked to have seen the initial teasing incident and get the character’s reaction to help develop those characters. And I would like to have seen more of a focus on friendship and kindness than the soccer.
Overall, First Win: How Friendship and a Bit of Kindness Makes Every Team Stronger gets 2/5 stars from me.
Chocovela Plays Tennis
This was such a cute story that follows Chocovela through learning how to play tennis. He’s struggling to learn the game, and his coach tells him that he needs a positive attitude to be able to succeed. The story takes you through Chocovela’s journey not only to learn how to play tennis, but to learn how to have a positive attitude. Sameer and Zalina Jani, like Jimenez, makes the reader a promise. The difference her is that Jani delivers and in spades. I cannot recommend this book more–fantastically written. It’s an adorable story that teaches a great life lesson. This earns 5/5 stars from me.
My First Bunny Magician Book: Learning Geometric Shapes, Colors, and Days of the Week
My First Bunny Magician Book: Learning Geometric Shapes, Colors, and Days of the Week is a basic educational book written by Shandra Nalia. The book is meant to teach shapes, colors, and days of the week, which I suppose it does, but it focuses more on memory. The story is very simple: The bunny transforms himself into a shape each day, and his friends say ‘he’s so funny’. Then he asks what shape he transformed into each day and what color, and his friends answer. To be honest, the story is a little dull and the rhymes at the beginning are a little awkward. I would have loved to see a little more variety in language from the bunny’s friends. With the star, they do say he’s shiny, but most of the comments are that he is funny, which really drags the story down. I also think that the Q&A after each day of the week does little more but to drag the story on longer than it needs to be. This story gets a 2/5 from me.
Of the three books reviewed in Book Reviews: First Edition, the only one I can really recommend is Chocovela Plays Tennis. It is available on Kindle Unlimited, or you can purchase the ebook for $7.99, and paperback for $14.99.
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