The Jewel Collar

“The Jewel Collar is the story of a Maltese dog, Aristotle, who moves from the family beach house to a new home so his Mommy, an attorney,can be closer to the Courthouse and train station. It is the Christmas season and Ari is very sad, missing his garden friends. His Mommy gives him an early gift to cheer him up -- a Jewel Collar. Ari decides to share the jewels on his Jewel Collar with new friends in the Floral Park garden including Steve the Squirrel, Mikey the Mallard, and many others. They decorate their garden Christmas tree and decide to call themselves the Garden Friends Club. The lesson learned is that while moving can be a sad experience, a child can make new friends by sharing and without giving a gift.”

At first, this was a book which I was going to give the “good try” award. From the pages I can see, the book isn't loathsome – it has a pretty (though totally odd cover) and as a dog lover, I can't really entirely fault the sweet photographs of her cute pups. Animals are a pretty safe standby in the children's lit world, so the subjects doesn't necessarily make me gasp either. But when I dig deeper, the reason for this book never appears, and I start to feel a little more discomfort with The Jewel Collar.

After reviewing the available pages, I am still unclear what possessed author Christine Roberts to think that this book had to be (expensively) published for the world to purchase? It is clearly biographical, and I can't fathom why anyone outside her circle would be interested in her life. Sure, little niece or next door neighbor might be charmed, but beyond that, I don't see a real audience. At times, I found her story a little creepy, and not a wee bit desperate. Learning that Ari and his Mommy Christie (don't care about her) live in a “beautiful house overlooking Newport Beach” is TM(Useless)I, and I was uncomfortable viewing photos of someone's actual house within this lightly fictionalized story.

This dogs is not an animal imbued with personality, and as far as I can see, it get little or no character development. Even though I can see her dog is cute, the reason she has an emotional connection to him is that he is her dog. What are readers without that connection to do? Cuteness can only take you so far, and pretty soon it turns into you spending 16 bucks on someone's else's Shutterfly Album.

The second thing that irks me is that within the product description she specifically tells us what we will learn. I think we can all agree that bibliotherapeutic books can be helpful for children and adults to a certain extent, but the condensing of a whole book into a one sentence “lesson learned” suggests that there wasn't much there in the first place. There is also something a little creepy about the pup being given bling to cheer it up. My own dogs bounce around at the sight of a little rawhide, but the suggestion that an expensive consumer good can make a hard situation better seems poorly considered. Oh, and making it a Christmas story? Makes. it. even. more. tacky.

This women is a member of SCWBI. Let us remember her story as we read, write and review children's books.

Silly the Scarecrow

So a funny thing happened - I kind of forgot that I blogged, Ah well, I am back and we shall see if it sticks this time.

The specific reason I am back is a nasty book called Silly the Scarecrow by J.H Willis, JR. I have seen this author spamming quite a few message boards - in my opinion, a sure sign that their book has little chance of succeeding on any of the ways I deem acceptable (reviews, hand selling, quality in general) so I decided to check it out. And, wow, was I right. And if this is right, then I only wanna be wrong. This is a simply awful little book.

I confess to only reading the "sample" pages, but they are so tragically flawed that I can safely say the rest of the book would be equally horrid. Okay, I know grammar is hard - there are so many rules! I myself often need a sanity check from my lovely significant other to ensure that I haven't let slip a tense error or a misplaced modifier. Yet this is beyond those kinds of errors. The wording in this book is just flat out wrong. On the very first page, there is a sentence fragment. Never a good way to start things.

But on the second page, things get downright weird. The word use is so flawed as to be bizarre, and although the thought that English might not be the author's first language crossed my mind, I decided that is *not* an excuse, as a good read through by a writing group (or a college student, or a high school student) would catch these errors. For instance how can a path be "discarded" - did the author mean deserted, or perhaps abandoned? What exactly does the author mean by "social attire? Cloths? Manners? Social class? Huh? Was the word "wondering" meant to be "wandering"? Not only are these word choices annoying and overly pretentious but there is a really egregious comma splice that made me squint with pain. I spent way too much time trying to decode this page.


I am also turned off by the way that this book is marketing itself. It professes itself as an educational text. The book comes with a "great instructional assessment at the end of the book" and "great vocabulary building" exercises. Yuck.  Every child wants to learn in the context of a stinky, overly didactic book that misused most of the words it professes to teach.

The good news is that I still found Silly the Scarecrow educational. Just not in the way that the author meant.