Kevin SherryCritiques

Independent Reading Level: PK-3

Our friend the squid returns with a paint brush. There's very little text in this (and it ends with a cheesy pun), but the pictures are clean and funny, including a giant double fold-out at the end.

Genre
Humorous stories
Picture books for children
Tone
Amusing
Illustration
Big and bold
Cartoony
Subject
Boasts and praises
Giant squids
Marine animals
Oceans
Seafaring life
Self-confidence
Self-perception
Size
Squids

The lesson learned: you're the biggest until you're not. Beautiful colors and a funny ending.

When a boat crashes into a giant sea turtle, the survivors make their home on its back, but they miss their own families, so they sail off again, and turtle is lonely...until they return, with families in tow!
*
Re-read March 2023

The story is about a giant squid that brags about being larger than the other sea creatures. In my opinion, this book is funny and comprehensive. First, I liked the giant squid as the main character who is confident and logical. It understands its size and mentions many times that it is larger than any marine animal except for the massive whale that ate it. I found it to be a little hilarious that the squid was mistaken about the whale, but then it sees every sea creature mentioned throughout the story. In the end, the squid declared that it is larger than anything in the belly of the whale. The point of view is another reason I was interested in the story. I understood that the squid was the first-person character. In each page, the squid kept saying "I'm," which is the pronoun of the first-person character. As the story's big idea, size category is an essential influence on helping readers understand what object is small or large. It was also about identifying various sea animals such as crabs, sword fishes, dolphins, and octopuses.

Riding on the coattails of I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean!, this book brings back the same enthusiastic giant squid, now with a paintbrush. The other ocean creatures get fed up - "you're making a mess!" - but the squid counters, "You mean...MESS-terpiece!" The final fold-out page reveals the squid's canvas: the side of the whale.

This book is perfect, I like that it was all over the place being funny/silly yet it taught manners. I believe this is a great book for children and their parents to read. It is fun and goofy but very educational.

A giant squid is proud that it's the biggest thing in the ocean, and when this turns out not to be true, cheerfully proclaims, "I'm the biggest thing in this whale!"

The second of the Remy Sneakers series, this is a comic style story that many 2nd to 4th graders will enjoy.

Remy's treasure vanishes, so the critter crew is on the case, but is the thief one of their own?

This book is similar to the illustrations and text of the Bad Kitty books.

The first of the Remy Sneakers series, this is a comic style story that many 2nd to 4th graders will enjoy.

To clear his name Remy needs help from many unlikely critters.

This book is similar to the illustrations and text style of the Bad Kitty books. Young readers who enjoy Bad Kitty or Captain Underpants will enjoy this book.

Manners books for kids. It’s a subculture that has been around forever and is unlikely to ever go away. Fourteen picture book creators take on manners in this mash up of talent. Each illustrator is given a double page spread to fill with their work as well as some advice on how to mind their manners. There is a specific setting in each one, including school, birthday party, table manners, and the supermarket.

From the same author as the Yeti files comes the second installment in the Remy Sneakers series. A hybrid great for those favoring illustrations over text with short chapters and big fonts.
Remy’s journal, the one with memories from his time with his family, has been stolen. Out of the blue a cat, buttercup, is willing to help Remy. It is to good to be true. Buttercup tricks Remy to more cats who steal his fanny pack contents and make him draw their portraits: Cat with the pearl earring and The Mona Furry. Remy doesn’t have any options to find the journal without buttercup and ends up in the sewer becoming lunch for big Al, the alligator of the sewer. Along the way he draws more and more just like his grandpa did for the journal and makes his own memories. In the end he even finds one of his cousins.
The story is kept simple but the illustrations are fun and for those who are not quite ready for dogman, this is a good fit.
AD
Written
2nd - 4th grade

see also Barnacle Is Bored

I liked this book for a couple of reasons. The illustrations were vivid and made you feel like you were in the ocean with the rest of the sea creatures. Not only were the illustrations colorful and engaging, but some pages even opened up and threw the pictures in your face! I loved that it kept you excited for what was going to be on the next page. I liked the characters that were included. The main character was an squid, who didn't care when little fish were commenting on his art, and even a shark.. It was ironic when his canvas was a huge whale, bigger than the shark. I liked how the characters were well thought about and realistic in the interactions they share in the ocean. The "big picture" in this book was to not give up on yourself. Even though many sea creatures tried to discourage the squid, in the end he didn't give up and they were surprised by his wonderful masterpiece.

A squid compares his size to a bunch of sea creatures to prove he is the biggest in the ocean, until he gets swallowed by a whale.
1 book

Library storytime notes: What a fun book to read with the storytime group! We used a bunch of felts -- everyone got some felt piece of marine wildlife, watched for their animal to come up, and put the felt on the board when it was their turn. And, of course, everyone wanted to be the whale SO BADLY, which necessitated reading the book more than once. That's probably the best praise I can give a book: kids wanted to hear the book multiple times during storytime.

I personally did not like this book. I had kind of judged a book by its cover and chose this book because I liked the illustrations. I think that this book is targeted for kindergarten or first grade students because the sentences were simple and the font was large.

So again, I initially chose this book because I liked the illustrations. Based on the front cover I thought maybe it was about a town who had settled down unknowingly on a huge turtle. Not what it was about. It was a really weird story, the title didn’t seem fitting. After reading some, I was under the impression it would be about cooperation and working together. Each animal had a special skill, “Owl could knit, Bear could build, Frog could cook, and Cat could draw”. So when they each went to work on their own skill, they were able to help each other. But then the story wasn’t about cooperation and teamwork anymore, it was about friendship in a way. Turtle thought they would never leave him. “’We miss our families,’ Frog said one day. I didn’t understand. Wasn’t I their family? ‘We have to go home,’ Bear added. But wasn’t I their home?” So they all left him and he got lonely again. But then they all came back with their families and more giant turtles? The story felt all over the place. I couldn’t really pick out a central message, I think the closest I could come up with could be that “friends make all the difference”, but that’s only because it’s written on the back cover. I can kind of understand where the author was trying to show how important friends can be, but I didn’t feel like it came across well in the book.

I love this book because it encourages art. The octopus uses his ink to make pictures. The shark tells him that he is making a mess and the octopus ignores him. The best part of this book is not the story but the art. The art was completed in three layers each separated by glass that was pried from the windows of shipwrecked pirate ships.There is a watercolor layer background, then a cut paper background, then a cut paper level, and then finally and ink layer consisting of 100% fresh squid ink. The endpapers are modeled after Joan Miro's Poetess and the whale mural after Pablo Picasso's Guernica.
Ages k-2nd
Genre- Fantasy because the squid is creating art.

This story is about a giant turtle who lives alone in the middle of the ocean. The turtle often gets lonely and is afraid he will be alone forever. The central message of this story is good things come to those who wait. One day, there is a shipwreck and four animals wash up on the giant turtle. They live there for awhile before they decide to go back home. The giant turtle is sad when his friends leave and decides he will be alone forever. To his delight, the four animals return to the giant turtle and bring their families and friends with them. The giant turtle becomes their permanent home and he no longer has to fear the thought of being alone forever.

This book is created by 14 different authors and illustrators. They each have two pages where they illustrate with their own unique style and write about the correct manners to have within certain contexts. This is a fantasy book because it features animals talking and acting like humans and not all of the laws of nature pertain to it. This book is an example of fantasy because the illustrations depict non-human things interacting and participating in human like activities. The one main thing that I didn't like was that although it was funny, it was pretty negative. Don't do this, don't do that. I see how kids would find it funny and its a comical way to talk abut manners but they could have focused more on DO rather than DON'T.

This is a great little undersea adventure that makes a terrific read aloud story. The main character is a giant squid, who spends his day cataloging everything that he's bigger than. Then he runs into a whale. I won't spoil the fun, but the ending is just right.