Review: Nice Illustrations, Teaches Kids to Stand Up to Bullies
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 14, 2012
The illustrations in their colour and style reminded me a lot of the Bernstein Bears books.  The main characters in this one are dogs but you've also got a bear and an owl and a few other animals too.  This is one of those children's books where the animals are basically humans just drawn as animals, although they do seem to have human owners on the last page.Basically in this story a moving truck arrives next door to the house of two dogs (Casey and Bella).  A doberman is moving in next door, Bella and Casey start hassling it to come play with them.  The doberman in a quite blunt way tells them to get lost.  Later they play Frisbee and with a miss throw, interrupt the doberman's sleep as the Frisbee lands in his backyard.  The doberman has had enough and takes their Frisbee inside his house.  Bella and Casey decide to go to the park where on route a stranger (an owl) approaches them.  Ignoring all stranger danger lessons they've ever been taught they stop and talk to it where it informs them it has been observing them and they have been the victims of bullying.  It outlines various tactics for dealing with bullies which the two use when they come across some of their disabled friends being bullied in the park, an ice cream store and at their school.  The picture book does teach kids that you should stand up to bullies, report them to adults and so on, as well as teaches adults that putting up signs with bully free zone and the like doesn't do a thing to stop bullying.  However I don't think in real life a gang of kids bullying one kid in a park will stop simply because two other kids tell them to. I don't think in real life things would go quite that smoothly and there would more likely be a bit of a fight or verbal altercation before the bullies back down and apologise.  But still the lesson is there and does highlight that bullies are cowards who will back down when they don't have an easy victim.This Kindle version obviously hasn't been designed specifically for Kindle.  It's likely been scanned in from a hard copy and only uses up about the top two thirds of the screen.