Review: I Don't Get It
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 18, 2013
"Go Figure" by Dennis Young is not really a story; it's more of a tool intended to help children learn shapes, exercise their imagination, and interact with their parents. I tried to like it, always keeping in mind the fact that I am not one of the target audience, but I just could not make myself like it. The drawings are definitely not done by anyone with artistic talent, but I suppose it's not necessary to have artistic talent to illustrate a children's shape-learning book. Each shape has (or is) a face; children and the parents are supposed to imagine a "back story" for each of the shapes, discussing what they eat, where they live, what they do for a living, etc. In that regard, it seems to me some of the figures are left open to a potentially bigotted interpretation, and thus are NOT what parents should be teaching their children.Some of the shapes are obviously supposed to be people; others are difficult to classify as anything. Facial expressions are sometimes difficult to read, as well. There are exactly 3 words of text in the entire "book"; "hope" is written on the roof of a building on the next to last page, and "the end" is written on the last page. What you get is 20 pages of abstract representations of general geometric shapes. I DEFINITELY would be upset if I paid $2.99 for this. I got it free, and I'm still disappointed.I suppose some children might like this book. I would sincerely hope some parents would be willing and even happy to spend time with their children, going through this book. But it was just not possible for me to give it more than two stars. I wouldn't give it one star, because one star on Amazon means "I Hate It" and those are pretty strong words, even for this book. Two stars just means "I Don't Like It", and that is my position. I'm sorry, but the whole thing just left me asking, WHY?I came away from "reading" this book with only one thing absolutely clear to me: the author, as a student, was one of those kids who was always doodling in his textbooks. I'm afraid I can't bring myself to recommend this one, but check it out for yourself and see what you think. It could be just what you are looking for.