Title: Are you sleeping?
By: Constanze von Kitzing
Age recommendations: 0-3
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I have to be honest, when I first saw the cover of this book, I wasn't sure I wanted it. There was something about the art style that almost turned me off! In fact, the only reason I changed my mind was because I heard what "I'm the Best" was about and fell in love with the premise of the book. I then decided that if that one was as good as it sounded, the other Little Lion books should be good, too, right? So I ordered this one, too.
The first time I read these two books with my daughters, ages 8 and 1, they fell in love. I was happy to share with everyone just how much they loved this book so when I got to work reviewing it, I decided to ask my son (16) and my husband to review it with me since I hadn't raved to the whole world how much they had loved the book! So, here is the results of our honest review of Are you Sleeping?
What is it about?
Little Lion should be asleep, but Little Lion isn't tired, so Little Lion makes his way around, looking for someone to play with, but will Little Lion find someone to play with before Little Lion gets to tired?
What did we think?
Unexpectedly, my boys didn't share the same opinion as the girls did. In fact, both my husband and son agreed that this didn't feel like a Barefoot book to them. My husband thought that the story was a little too simple making the repetitiveness pop a little too much for his liking and and highlighting the predictability of the story.
In addition, the art style was found to be "inconsistent", creating a feeling in my son that Little Lion changed appearances throughout the story, the biggest offense possibly being the cover! It was also stated that they had a hard time telling who or what Little Lion was talking to the first time Little Lion asks if someone is sleeping and that the trees are also difficult to identifying when asking the birds if they, too, are asleep.
Finally, my husband really missed the "bonus" features at the end of the book, stating that he things Barefoot missed the opportunity to share some really interesting information about nocturnal animals as well as the number of animals featured in the book!
l must admit, I, too, was not sold on the art style. While there are some pictures that just make me fall in love with Little Lion, there are others that do leave me a little confused. Some, like the cover, I'm just not a fan of and I also feel that as far as story goes, it does not stand out as much as I have come to expect Barefoot stories to.
I think my biggest complaint, however, is that this book is not in board book format, though I have been told that this is because there are too many pages to allow this book to be in board book format and still be at an acceptable price, which I respect.
On the other hand, there were some things that we liked about the book! My husband commented on how he really liked that the pictures progressively get darker as the story goes on, representing the passage of time and my son really liked the end, finding it adorable!
I liked it more then the boys did. I felt like it was a cute story, especially for the age group it is written for. My daughters and I enjoyed guessing what animal Little Lion was talking to from the clues on one page and then turning the page to find out if we were right, then counting together the number of each animal we saw. It was fun to see what animals were featured and what unexpected animals appeared! And while I wasn't in love with the art style, there were some images that just pulled at my heart and made me love Little Lion!
However I was very torn about one thing. Little Lion is not assigned a gender. On the one hand, I think this is a great step in the right direction to acceptance for those struggling with gender identity, and I love that by not assigning Little Lion a gender, the reader is given the freedom to refer to Little Lion as the gender they see fit (we tend to refer to Little Lion as "he", my son explaining that he thinks that is because Little Lion reminds him of Simba from The Lion King) and while reading the book, this fact is not overwhelmingly obvious, however it can get awkward while having discussions about Little Lion and the book when you are desperate to not assign a gender to the main character!
All in all, while we didn't love the book as much as we love some other Barefoot Books, we didn't dislike it, either. We all found things that we liked, each being able to easily and quickly state our favorite parts of the book (My son really liked the ended while my husband and I favored the owls) dispute the surprisingly long list of what we did not like about this particular book.
What do we rate this book?
My husband rated this book at a....
2 out of 5 zzz's
My son rated this book at a...
2.5 out of 5 zzz's
I rate this book at a...
3 out of 5 zzz's
Now that you've heard what we think about this new addition to Barefoot Books, tell us what you think! How many zzz's would you rate it! Tell us in the comments below!
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