Sunday 16 January 2022

Book Review: "The Pixies of Grantham Manor "Pips Perfect Plan": A children's folklore, fairy tale picture book" by M F Katori


⭐⭐ out of 5

I'll start this review in the same way that I've started all of my recent book reviews: it's starting off with the full 5 stars and I'm always hopeful that it'll finish with 'em all still in place too.

I'm a bit confuzzled by the age range and grade level on Amazon 'cos it says that the age range is 2-9 years with a grade level of Reception-7 which are vastly different reading abilities and the ages don't come anywhere near the grade level either!

Enough with the pickiness, lets get on with reading this lol

The front cover looks very... how can I put this kindly?  Amateurish?  Rushed?  It like the author or illustrator has found 3 images online (which I hope they have written permission to use) and just squished them altogether on the cover, then added the text and they've given up and sent it out for publication in the hope that no-one would give two hoots about it... the first star is already starting to wobble and I haven't even started reading yet!

Oh boy, I've read one sentence and it's already waaay too mature for 2-9 year olds, so I'm hoping that the grade level is more appropriate, but I'm not sure that even 11 and 12 year olds (grade 7) would be able to understand the word choices in the first sentence so that first star is coming off after less than a sentence.

I'm 26% of the way through and there hasn't been a single word of speech yet from any of the multitude of characters and the author has chosen to write 5 years worth of story into literally two very boring sentences.

The second star has fallen off after 30% because there still hasn't been any speech between the characters.  I'm so glad I got this on Kindle Unlimited rather than paying for the paperback!

Usually I'd be ecstatic to have Paganism within a children's book, but the author has got eeeverything wrong and it feels like she is making Paganism into a dark religion which should be avoided at all costs, which I really don't like, so the third star is gone at 65%.

Now the author is trying her hand at little poetic ditties which are slightly better than the rest of the book, but not by much!

There has been a picture on every other page and there is no way that either of the age ranges is appropriate... the youngest children this is aimed at would have been fidgitting and picking their nose throughout and the older age group would have felt like they *had* to finish reading it otherwise it'd be wasted money.

To sum up this entire review:  Don't waste your money.

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