What kind of rabbit climbed up a beanstalk? A Jack rabbit. This is a cute colorful book for kids who are just learning to appreciate telling and understanding jokes. There are a lot of plays on the word hare/hair. Not too sophisticated, but good clean humor for young-uns. There is one illustrated joke on each page. The text is easy to read and the pictures are bright and cheerful.

Poor Ernestine! She comes all the way from County Clare, Ireland to be a mail-order bride in Lizard Lick, Texas, only to find that her bridegroom--who bears the wonderful name of Virgil Beetle--is a tobacco-chewing cad who lives with his awful family and who doesn't give a hoot what she thinks or feels.

After biding her time with the Beetles until a preacher can be found, Ernestine boldly decides to make a quick getaway disguised as a cowboy. She meets up with the cowboy Texas Teeth and they have some adventures together herding cattle before eventually falling in love.

Although the illustrations are colorful, they verge on amateurishness. But the story is well told, and author/illustrator Nicole Rubel has obvious affection for her subject, and that makes all the difference. Lots of fun for any little kid who's ever pretended to be a cattle-herdin' cowgirl or cowboy.

Rotten Ralph the mischievous cat returns in another great story in the series. When a touring Faire comes to town, super-confident (and lazy?) Ralph loses all the booth games to his cousin Percy, and Percy gives the prizes to the beloved Sarah.
Ralph cheats (he's sometimes clever, sometimes just downright rotten) and wins some games, but he eventually owns up to his dishonesty. After making it up to the booth operators, Ralph finally--and honestly--wins a prize at the dunking booth.

I love the Rotten Ralph series, especially for Nicole Rubel's rich, color-saturated illustrations. She uses beautiful, unusual colors (sometimes recalling Matisse), and her sense of fun complements Jack Gantos' underplayed humor. Gantos wrote a great line for Sarah on the last page: "'Oh, Ralphie,' she said. 'You don't need any practice at being my winner.'" 48 pages divided into four small chapters. The jacket informs us that "an animated series based on...Rotten Ralph is now appearing on television in over 20 countries. In France, Ralph is known as Ralph la Racaille (Ralph the Rascal." I recommend also Nicole Rubel's great "Cyrano the Bear."

Perfect for mischievious children who need to know they are always loved. Jealousy as an emotion is dealt with at a young child's level. Illustrations are comedic. My second graders gave it a thumbs up.

It's a sweet enough story, but my problem is that this is supposed to be a book to help teach kids how to read. Yet on EVERY SINGLE PAGE, the phrase "I've got" is used when "I have" would be grammatically more precise. Also, a picky point: the author rhymes "engineers" and "ears." Sorry, but "eers" and "ears" don't rhyme; they're the SAME SOUND. If we're going to teach kids to read and, eventually, to write, we need to give them good examples, not sloppy ones.

This delightful book imparts an essential truth to little ones in just two lines per page, 24 pages in all. Each double page spread features the main character with another family member, and in rhyme, relates the feature or body part that they have in common. "When I sing songs with Uncle Keith, Aunt Lil declares I've got his teeth." Toddlers will especially love guessing the rhyming feature if given the chance. The illustrations are detailed enough to give a clue as to the feature of similarity as well. After detailing how much like all her family members the little girl is, the book finishes with the girl looking in the mirror and the text "But looking at my family, I know just what I see, I may have a bit of everyone, but they all add up to me." The last spread is a family portrait and the line "Completely, uniquely, definately, specially, the one and only ME!"

This book would be endurable without the text. The low point is on page 24 when "Sarah awarded Ralph with a celebration." The text should read, of course, Sarah rewarded Ralph with a celebration. This glaring error should have been caught by a reasonably capable editor, so perhaps this book was published without being proofread...or perhaps it was published without having been read at all. Sloppy grammar and uninspired story-construction are all too common in fiction, especially children's books, and this insipid story is an egregious example of irresponsible book publishing.

"Not so Rotten Ralph" is one of my favorite books of the series. My five year old brother laughs and laughs each time we read it! The illustrator again adds to the plot with cleaver details - tell your child to pay close attention to the pictures!

This is an amusing story. Kids will like the humor and naughtiness. However, the story makes me uneasy. There are seemingly no bad consequences for the cat's misbehavior. He doesn't care that he hurt another cat's feelings. And I am turned off by Ralph the cat being his owner Sarah's favorite valentine.