Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Boxed Set: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic, Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm by Betty MacDonald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


We've read these books together many, many times, and the kids STILL ask for them! That is a sure sign that they're good! :)

As a mom, I LOVE the repetition for kids—there is a problem identified, a cure given, and all is well within 20 pages or so! It’s perfect to read one cure a night at bedtime, and they get the full gambit of the story from beginning to end before they slip off into dreamland! They’re sweet, funny, and predictable, which is perfect for kids!

The conversations of the moms with other moms are HILARIOUS!!! They’re perfect!! You call another mom to ask her for advice, but she goes off on how perfect her kids are and what THEY do is always right and wonderful...I laughed and laughed every time a mom would call her 'friend' to ask for help!

The cures in the first book are actually something that could be possible. Such as letting your kid live in his mess of a room until he can't possibly get out! Ha!

The middle two of the series have cures that involve magic pills/powders/talking animals that produce some pretty hilarious results (think pigs with manners, magic powder that makes show-offs invisible, pills that produce smoke with tattletales that puff out of the mouth…) They're fun and the kids loved them--always wondering what cure would be thought up next!

The last book (Mrs. P’s Farm) has cures that could reasonably happen (ie without magic), however the animals are very human-like and thus the cures have that added ‘charm’ so it’s not a ‘how-to’ book that can still be enjoyed by children and parents alike! All the animals have special 'talents' and seem very human like! Especially that crazy parrot! :)

The family setting is very ‘nuclear’—Mom, Dad, kids, family pets… The moms all stay home and bake goodies all day, and are pretty pathetic and wishy-washy. The dads go to work and read the paper and yell if anyone is too loud…they're quick to punish and ignore their family while reading the paper, and have no time to help the moms at all. The kids all walk to school by themselves and play all day without the moms really knowing where they are (the moms will call Mrs. P and Mrs. P will say she knows the children well and the moms are usually quite surprised by this!!!) Also, there's the old-school way of doling out punishment: yelling and spanking. The kids call each other names...and sometimes even call their parents names! (Such as dummy or idiot) I admit, I skipped over those when I read them aloud. Someday, my kids are going to go back and read these to themselves (or their children) and wonder why it is different than what I read! Ha!

My kids laugh and laugh and laugh! They really love the Never-go-to-bedders cure, the radish cure, the thought-you-said cure...and so many more!! As a kid, you can relate and find the action funny and wish you could do all those fun things, too! As an adult, you can also relate—recognizing all those ‘diseases’ in your own kids—and wish that you had a cure-all just a phone call away! I could sure use Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle once in awhile, and if anyone has her contact info, feel free to share!




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The Christmas Chronicles: The Legend of Santa Claus

The Christmas Chronicles: The Legend of Santa Claus by Tim Slover

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Christmas Chronicles gives a new twist to the Legend of Santa Claus that I admit is almost believable! It starts out a little more contemporary than I was expecting, but it was PERFECT! A man wants to cut down a Christmas tree, gets stuck in the snow, and happens upon something very magical--a glowing red talking reindeer pulling a small glowing person in a sleigh quickly through the forest up to a road that goes straight up, smells strongly of peppermint, and disappears once they reach it! Even more strange is that when the little man and the reindeer reach the road, a book slips off the sleigh and lands right at the man's feet. What could it be? A biography of Santa Claus!



The Legend itself is lovely! It tells of how Klaus was made an orphan due to the Black Death, becomes a carpenter, grows up being the most kind and generous person you can imagine. He meets Anna, a spunky, fun-loving lady, and they are soon married. It is a lovely tale and unfolds all the mysteries of the traditions we hold dear at Christmas. It is definitely a fresh new look at our traditions (such as why we use red and green, why we say you should be good all year or you won't get any toys, why we write our Christmas lists down, why we use peppermint, etc.) This is a book I will recommend to everyone to read at Christmas time--I will spread the word! :)



We LOVE this book! It was my Christmas bedtime pick to read aloud this year, and we zoomed through it in less than a week! My oldest two were completely enthralled and begged for more every single night. I teared up a few times! I don't think I can say enough good about this!! Find it and read it! :)





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Peter and the Star Catchers

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This tells the story of how Peter Pan became the way he is--and it is FULL of adventure and excitement!! I've read it aloud to my kids twice now. I think they enjoyed it more the second time...and I realized that they say the word 'idjit' quite a bit more than I remembered! Ha! Since I'm reading it aloud, I take advantage of that and skip it... :)

In this tale, we read of Peter and his friends, who are all orphans living in a an orphanage, but are currently being shipped off somewhere (they aren't told where for a long time) on a ship called 'The Neverland'! Peter meets Molly who is helping her father on a trip and between the two of them, they manage to save the day more than once! There's a mysterious trunk on board that causes quite a stir--it makes people feel extremely happy...and even makes rats fly! What could it be?

I loved all the characters--and I love how 'Black Stache' starts out as the most feared pirate to sail the seven seas, only to eventually become a sniveling whiny captive...and the 'Captain Hook' that we all know and 'love'!

This book is great fun (especially for boys)--but watch out, as some of the action tends to get a little bloody! Overall, though, I wouldn't have a problem handing this to a 12 year old and telling them to have a good time! :)





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Inside Out

Inside Out: A Musical Adventure by Elizabeth Swados

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Inside Out is definitely on the inventive side. I suppose that sometimes you feel you really need to go to great lengths to get kids to want to practice for their music lessons. This book gets seriously strange and silly at times! Most of the time, I had no idea what was going on. The end ties it all together rather nicely, but probably not soon enough to really save it from flopping. My kids enjoyed all the strange characters, however, and didn’t mind the fact that nothing really seemed very congruent as far as plot or storyline, and that the characters were very two-dimensional. There were times I enjoyed some of the characters inside the instruments; that they were appropriately matched to their instrument, such as the loud robot creatures in the percussion. Other times, I was at a complete loss as to why those specific characters were chosen for that instrument, such as the old men on strings inside the timpani or the governor inside the trombone (his speech was, though, absolutely hilarious…Best part of the whole book)! Then there was that lone character that seemed to follow the twins around everywhere and changed shape—always to something that started with the letter ‘p’. Why the letter ‘p’? I never found out. There were rhymes and songs that had no rhyme nor meter to them…nor any real reason for being there. The pictures were rather terrifying. Overall, the whole book felt as if it were translated (badly) from another language. If you can make it through, by the time you get to the end, you may start checking your instruments for little people, and thinking twice about being out of tune.



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The Ogre of Oglefort

The Ogre of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Ogre of Oglefort is a very funny and creative story. It definitely follows the pattern of the majority of Eva Ibbotson's children's books: The main characters are not within the mold of your average heroes! Instead of princesses or princes or knights being the main concentration, they're ghosts or hags or ogres or strange animals. But it works! She has a way of making the gross and nasty things that revolve around the existence of those creatures seem like part of every day life and, more often than not, it’s absolutely hilarious!

In this book we meet the unlikely tenants of 26 Whipple Road: A Hag and her familiar (a toad named Gladys), a Troll, and a Wizard, among others. They're preparing to go to a meeting that will announce this summer's activity for magical creatures. Unfortunately, Gladys (the toad) states that she's too tired to go. The Hag tries to find another familiar in time for the meeting, but instead finds a little orphan boy who is very keen to join with them!

The meeting starts out wonderfully with the idea that everyone will be going to a fun fair to rid them of a mouse infestation, but the Fates appear with different ideas! Instead, our hapless heroes are told they need to go to the far north to save a princess and kill an ogre!

Along the way, we meet a host of very clever and funny characters: Some dimwitted princes, an ogre who is definitely not what he seems, a group of very exotic and helpful animals, and a sweet little dog. Every part of this book is very clever--such a fun twist on 'horror' stories, where absolutely no one is what they seem! The ogre is supposed to be mean and horrible--but instead, he's just tired. I thoroughly enjoyed his planning of his funeral! I loved all the misunderstandings of the Fates who judge what needs to be done by a 5 second viewing on a screen between naps! I think one of the main themes of every Eva Ibbotson book, be it for children or adults, is that things really are not as they seem. Our first impressions are almost always completely off, and many times even the things we think we've known and understood about someone (or a group) since childhood are flawed. It's all about stepping into someone else's shoes and finding out what makes them tick to realize that maybe that person isn't so scary—or different—after all!

While I read this book out loud to my children I was able to discuss with them some of the nuances of Ibbotson’s humor, which I find to be more intelligent than crass or silly, and we shared ideas about some of the situations. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. However, if you were to want to hand this to a child to read on their own, I would recommend a little older age due to some potentially scary characters (some of the more evil ghosts, the Norns, even the main characters themselves at times), talk of witchcraft and wizardry, and the humor itself, which is aimed toward a slightly older age group.



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