First sentence: I'll tell you a story of this, and I'll tell you a story of that. I'll tell you a story of cavernous caves and a chimp with a magic hat. And then...
Premise/plot: This & That is a book celebrating storytelling and togetherness. It stars two mice: a parent and a child.
My thoughts: It was okay. It does celebrate storytelling, but it does not necessarily celebrate stories themselves. In other words, it's ALL tell, no show. We get hints of five to six stories. But no actual stories. Unless you think one-sentence stories are the most wonderful kinds of stories. Rhymes are emphasized more than stories. 90% of the time the goal is to end up with a rhyme for that. Hat. Cat. Chat. Mat. Fat. The end does switch it up a bit, reverses the order, and we end up looking for a rhyme with this. As an adult, well, I was less than thrilled.
Perhaps as equally entertaining as the text, readers can search the illustrations to find the two mice. I believe they are in every spread. One of the spreads it took me a while to spot them (they're in the queen's crown). They are there "in" the stories. I'm guessing this is all in celebration of imagination and the idea that stories take you places.
Text: 2 out of 5
Illustrations: 3 out of 5
Total: 5 out of 10
© 2017 Becky Laney of Young Readers
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