, a hardcover collection of seven really excellent Little Critter stories. There is no hit-or-miss here. Every single one in the book is great.Most of this review discusses the stories, but before I launch into that, I want to mention the totally cute illustrations for a moment. These are not great works of art or anything, but they are adorable and interesting. There are many background details to discover, particularly a spider, cricket, and mouse that follow Little Critter around to many places. The facial expressions on the parents and kids are also priceless.
Each of these stories is also available as an individual paperback. The included stories are:
One of the major overriding themes of these stories is a free-range childhood. The main character, who I guess is the Little Critter himself, is probably around four or five years old (old enough to have a little sister who is a kid, not a baby), but his parents give him a huge amount of freedom and responsibility. In Just for You alone, his mother lets him cook eggs, mop the floor, put away the dishes, carry the groceries home from the store, mow the lawn (with an old-style mechanical mower), and set the table for dinner. In every picture, the mother is in the background, looking on, encouraging Little Critter to do things on his own. When he messes things up, which he does repeatedly, she is clearly aggravated but always kind and helpful. This is also the main story of the rather obviously-titled All By Myself.
Despite his age-appropriate freedom, Little Critter has clear rules and limits imposed by his parents. When I Get Bigger is about his fantasies of the exciting things he'll do when those limits are removed. All of them are very reasonable things that bigger kids can do ("I'll go to the corner store by myself."), or at least could back in the 1970s ("I'll have a two-wheeler and a paper route. I'll make lots of money.").
Combining both free range philosophy and good parental limits, I Was So Mad describes what happens one day when Little Critter was prevented from doing a series of activities he wanted to do (putting frogs in the bathtub, climbing inside his sister's dollhouse, painting the exterior walls of the house, and juggling eggs, among other things), and decided that he was so mad he would run away. His parents look on in quiet amusement as he packs his wagon full of toys and cookies and heads out the door. But right outside, he runs into his friends and decides to go play baseball with them instead of running away.
The two ideas also intermingle in the last story in the book, which is my favorite, I Just Forgot. Parents sometimes have trouble understanding exactly how many things a kid has to learn and remember. Things that are second-nature to us--like turning off the bath water when we are done!--are just one more habit that a kid is in the process of forming. Little Critter is doing his best to remember all the things he needs to do, but he only gets about half of them right. The writing in this story is just adorable and captures a little kid's voice perfectly. Some of the things are presented straightforwardly ("I put my dishes in the sink after breakfast, but I forgot to put the milk away."), and others are almost laugh-out-loud funny ("I didn't forget to feed the goldfish. He just didn't look hungry. I'll do it now, Mom.").
I can totally relate to Little Critter's parents. They rarely say anything in these stories, but their facial expressions and body language always mirror exactly what I'd be feeling if my kid did whatever it is that Little Critter is doing just then. They are by turns proud, amused, frustrated, angry, worried, annoyed, and loving. But they generally stay in the background, letting Little Critter work out his problems for himself. This is most evident in Just a Mess, when Little Critter can't find his baseball mitt and his mother suggests that maybe he'll find it if he cleans his unbelievably cluttered room. She refuses to help, commenting, "You made the mess, so you can clean up the mess." You go, Mom Critter! In the whole story, she only intervenes to prevent Little Critter from washing his bedroom floor with the garden hose.
And parents are not perfect. I completely identify with Dad Critter as he gets increasingly annoyed with Little Critter's refusal to cooperate with the bedtime routine and ends up shouting "Just go to bed!"
Yet the love always shines through in these books. No matter how frustrated and annoyed the parents and child get with each other, there is always a tender moment. You just know that this is a strong, close-knit family. To a parent, one message of this book is that kids can be aggravating as heck, but they are still awesome. To a kid, the message is that parents can be aggravating as heck, but they are still awesome. Capturing both of those messages at once is, in my opinion, brilliant.
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