early readers

This book seems fine for a child of 3+ for an early reader, even though some of the conversation isn't ideal (the characters get angry at one another, and shout). For reading aloud to my 2yo, I made minor edits, and found that by keeping a playful tone, it felt rather believable. The disagreement isn't between close friends, so it doesn't really need resolution, and so it's more like in The Wild Things, where a child gets disillusioned with home, runs off, meets interesting characters, and said child finds they can't keep themselves fulfilled without the parent, so they come back home, and we aren't that interested in the characters left behind from the journey. And I think this is why it feels less impactful that they quarrel and the child leaves.

This sweet book is a delight. I chose to edit some language early in the book where Frederick's four companions are criticizing him for not pulling his weight (I forgot the exact language, but something along the lines of being lazy). Instead of letting it sound judgmental, I read it as a more lighthearted hands-on-hips, tapping-their-toes, eyebrows-slightly-raised with a playful tone, and that seemed to work well. We're trying to create a culture in our family where there's no distinction between work and play, b/c anything worth doing is worth finding a way to enjoy, especially by sharing the load amongst community. So that is the perspective we're coming from in editing the language. But it's by no means offensive, and if the time comes that my (now 2yo) is going through stacks of early readers, this will be fine with us at that time going into the stack as-is, especially after her experiences hearing us read it in a playful tone.

These stories are playful, sweet, and at times silly, and manages to be an early reader without really feeling like one most of the time.

The only reservation I have is that the 6th and final story probably needs to be skipped for parents being mindful of patriarchal and heteronormative messages. The "King of Hearts" from a card comes to life in a story Ting is telling: "...for the King of Hearts. He couldn't decide if he wanted to marry Ling or Ting..." - although Ling's response is "Marry? What?! Oh, Ting, you mixed up the whole story!", it's still an idea I don't want introduced to my young child.

These stories are adorably illustrated, clever, playful, imaginative, and sweet, with plenty of humor that is never at the expense of a character (accomplished very subtlely b/c the twins are equals and each has their own idiosyncrasies). There are even some puns and plays on words.

This book is every bit as delightful and fun as the other Ling & Ting books, with a very sweet theme running through it of sharing. The way they share is spontaneous and springs from their own ideas, and does not feel like moralizing, but feels natural to the mindset of the characters and target audience (young children). The idea is represented as if sharing just naturally springs from our inner child, from a state of delighting in sharing the joy and fun. Which is, actually, what the research shows, to be a total nerd on this one (source: "Social" by Matthew Lieberman). There is just one tiny caveat but fairly minor. One one page, the text "Ling is very sad. She tries not to cry." which is a bit unfortunate that it has such likeable characters modeling the desire to keep feelings inside.

This book is yet another gem with all the same strengths found in the other books in this series.

The illustrations are decent. Nothing amazing, but definitely a notch above many early readers. The story is totally inoffensive but also on the bland side. The vocabulary is not too simplistic, but the sentence structure still feels a bit stilted at times. Best thing about it is that it has, a bit unusually, a pangolin and sugar glider as characters (though some reviewers complain the characters shouldn't be in the same story as they're from different parts of the world).

This book is just so sweet and has a lovely tenderness and innocence to it. It seems like a rare gem among early readers, in that it's actually a really great story, reading level aside.

This book has 5 stories: Spring, The Story, A Lost Button, A Swim, and The Letter. All the stories are lovely, but I would skip "A Swim" because it models relational aggression (laughing at Toad in his swimsuit), but the other 4 are great. The relationship between the two characters is sweet and gently humorous, the stories are interesting & clever. And the language isn't too simplistic.