Friday, June 29, 2012

Just a Mess



Just a Mess is another Little Critter book by Mercer Mayer. Like most of the series, this story describes a very ordinary childhood occurrence/bit of mischief. When our hero can't find his baseball mitt, his mother tells him to clean his room. Rather than properly doing so, he frantically stuffs all his mess into his closet, under his bed, or in his toy chest. In his foolhardy haste, however, he manages to loose something important--his pillow. Though this would seem to be the opening for him to sort through all his junk and redo his abysmal cleaning job, instead he finds what he was looking for at the outset--his mitt. This apparently makes everything okay.

Though amusing, it bothers me that this kid doesn't seem to learn at all from his mistakes, nor is much guidance offered by his parents in the story. Thus, these stories are purely for amusement only and require a lot of discussion to turn them into good lessons. Even though I enjoyed these books as a child, I'm becoming less and less enthralled with them the more we read. Still, the illustrations are nicely detailed and most kids will probably get a laugh. Suitable for early readers grades 1-2.

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