Review: Excellent!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 26, 2013
All this authors stories are completely unique and we couldn't help from laughing, the whole family; especially, characters like Cameron and his stomach upset, Jane with her doodle art, or poor Fred at the zoo. This story is about illness, imagined, fake or real... it doesn't matter which. It's all about some creative reasons and ways to stay home from school. This is one of several bedtime rhyming stories by Peter W. Collier that I think are quite excellent.The author's free rhyming prose is sometimes better than rigid metered rhyming type poetry, so common to children stories. With other authors, the story seems to be sacrificed for the poetry, or the poetry is all there is about the story. All this author's innovative stories just flow nicely, when read carefully. We had a voice to audio program read it aloud and it was magical. Parents should read once or twice to themselves, and then to the child aloud. It's really great reading aloud and the author is true to his claims of his children books being only a 10 or 15minute fun bedtime experience. Also, his style of writing, using small vignettes about children is creative and reading flexible.This story has some limited and key illustrations, but the story creates plenty of imagery. Other stories, by this author, are for a younger age group and are fully illustrated, some also illustrated by the author. We have all Peter W. Collier's stories. I think there are 20 or more. We recommend it completely.