M Is for Maple Syrup: A Vermont Alphabet Book

We got this in Montpelier, VT on our trip to New England in 2018.

The style is really formulaic (there's a book of this sort for every state, although they are written by different authors). I would rather get something more unique, but since we collect children's books from every state we visit, these types of books are our fall back if we can't find anything more interesting about that state.

The thing I like about these books is that they cover a lot of the more prominent features of the state which we are likely to have seen/experienced so it's fun to get the reminders of our time there. They also have little blurbs on each page that give more information about each feature.

In this particular book, I really did not enjoy the text for each of the letters of the alphabet. The rhyming was really forced, inconsistent and just strange. I don't feel like it added much to the page and it felt really awkward reading it out loud. Honestly, it's some of the worse rhyming I've seen in a children's book. The redeeming quality of the book is the illustrations, the breadth of topics and the educational blurbs (but you wouldn't necessarily sit down and read all the blurbs at once about 26 different topics so that's why I'm not rating it higher for that feature).

I have other books from this series and this is probably my least favorite, but I'm still glad I have it for reference and nostalgia's sake.