The Flying Bed was just okay to me. My parents' families are both from Sicily, Italy, making me from 100% Italian decent, so when I saw that the setting of this book was Florence, a city I visited in 2013, I thought I would fall in love with this book. While the illustrations of the city are breathtaking, the plot did not do much for me. The book has way too much text in my opinion, especially for K-2 audiences in picture book format. The moral of the story is the effects of greed but it's not really touched on. The language of the text qualifies this book as appropriate for gifted students, but I am not sure my K gifted students would enjoy it very much. ( )

Guido is a poor baker who lives with his wife and owns a failing bakery. He goes to buy a bed one day only to realize that it's a magic bed that goes out flying everynight. As they soar through the air on this magic bed, they come across a magic baker who helps him but says that Guido must never tell anyone his secret. Greed gets the best of him and he ends up telling the secret and losing everything.
The illustrations in the book are beautiful and intricate but the story itself wasn't very good to me. It could've been a very interesting story but I got bored with it very quickly. ( )

http://ginasblogging.blogspot.com/2007/03/flying-bed.html ( )