Review: Smelly
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2013
What do you get when you cross Shel Silverstein and a fart joke? I could really see this being a nice introduction to poetry for some hard to win over young children. Especially boys seem to really be into the potty humor of this book, and if it was a bridge to something more, it would totally be worth it.But there are several short comings that keep the potty humor in the fore front, and any hope of being an introduction to something more from being realized:Artwork: I understand that the author is also the artist. The afore mentioned Mr. Silverstein used simple line drawings that even to this day captivate the reader. The art in "Smelly Song" does not do this. To be fair, I read the Kindle version in black and white. However, this should have been taken into account by the author. My kids and I found the drawings to be uninteresting and confusing.Story: We were actually confused until the end. Why exactly does the kid's breath smell so bad? Then at the end: beans? Really, we thought it was a story about bad breath. After all: His song is smelly, right? As he sings, people fall over. I don't know about everyone else, but I usually don't fart when I sing.Prose: This is probably my biggest complaint: there is no rhythm to this book. Things that should rhyme just don't. This could be due to the differences between dialects of English that the author and I speak. But the rhythm should still be there, and it just isn't.Overall: If you have a child that is really into juvenile potty humor, then this may be a good book for them. But for myself, my 12 year old, and my 10 year old this was just a frustrating 5 minute read,