Chicken Soup for Little Souls The Goodness Gorillas (Chicken Soup for the Soul)
Kindergarten-Grade 3?These three titles adapt longer stories of generosity and unexpected kindness for the picture-book set. In The Best Night Out, Danny is excited about going to the circus with his dad. However, when he meets a boy and his father waiting in line and it turns out they cannot afford the price of admission, Danny offers them his own tickets, and he and his father attend a basketball game instead. In Goodness Gorillas, Ms. King's students form a club to do good deeds, and all but the class bully, Todd, join the effort. When his dog is killed, the teacher encourages the children to reach out to him, resulting in the boy changing his ways and joining their club. In The Never-Forgotten Doll, Ellie learns that her 88-year-old favorite babysitter still feels sad about the loss of her prized china doll when she was a child. Ellie spends her savings on an antique doll and presents it to Miss Maggie for her birthday, leaving the elderly woman visibly touched. While the covers of these feel-good tales are rather ordinary, the realistic watercolor illustrations inside, particularly Dodson's, use strong colors in their full- and half-page paintings that complement the texts. The stories are readable, and the messages are clear, if a bit heavy-handed. They will be useful for adults who want to present strong moral values in a nonreligious manner. Although they may prove to a be a bit too sugarcoated for some, they are sure to provoke discussions about the need for kindness in our all-too-violent world.?Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RICopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.