The Santa in this story is a hard-working, hard-playing, jolly but largely solitary fellow who spends the entire year happily using his unmatched expertise in kids, toys, and gifts to match “the exact right kid with the exact right toy 99.9 percent of the time.” As always, Marla Frazee’s pictures are wonderful and reward settling in and really enjoying the details (like the subtle and funny “post-credits scene” on the back cover).
Author: Marla Frazee
Illustrator: Marla Frazee
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Posted in Picture Books
Tagged Christmas, Diverse Books, Marla Frazee, Santa Claus the World's Number One Toy Expert, toys
Whether you love riding roller coasters or watching them with fearful fascination (our current default), this book is a pleasure. The wonderful illustrations create a backstory and a personality for each person in the book. The attention to detail is amazing and the story is sympathetic to riders and non-riders alike. It almost (almost!) makes you want to get on board.
Author: Marla Frazee
Illustrator: Marla Frazee
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Posted in Picture Books
Tagged Diverse Books, Machines, Marla Frazee, Roller Coaster
This book is a pure pleasure to read aloud. The rhymes are clever and apparently effortless. My boys laugh and laugh at the ever increasing number of children in the family (the seven silly eaters of the title) and their ridiculously specific list of food demands. The pictures are absolutely wonderful–Marla Frazee is an amazing artist and her renditions of the goings on are priceless. My only qualm is that the mom seems responsible for just about everything (you see the dad in the background now and then, but he is barely mentioned in the text) and she spends a decade getting more and more frazzled before she finally lets the family know that she’s “a wreck.”
Sometimes we talk about how how the rest of the family could have pitched in more and how the mom could have put her foot down (much, much) sooner. But only sometimes. Most of the time we too busy giggling at the pictures and chanting along with the lines.
Author: Mary Ann Hoberman
Illustrator: Marla Frazee
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Posted in Picture Books
Tagged food, Marla Frazee, Mary Ann Hoberman, mystery reader books, The Seven Silly Eaters