Concept Series: A Starfish Book

Curious George is a picture book that is great for kids aged 4-9. Kids under 4 years old can absolutely enjoy hearing this story aloud, but it's illustrations do not tell the full story. Kids above 9 or 10 may be disinterested in the plot, but it is still a good casual read to share with kids of many ages.

This particular book is about George's first day of school, as the title suggests. As usual, George is very interested in all things school: math, reading, art, and physical education. He goes to each class being a very good student, but making a huge mess. His fellow students run around after him helping him clean, and no one even knows of his mischief.

I rated this book with 4 stars, because the plot is very engaging and funny, but this serious is not the most revolutionary or inventive. Even so, I have always had great experiences reading this book with kids. Kids are very responsive to having animals as protagonists and they have lots of fun imaging a monkey doing human activities, like going to school. The language is the perfect balance of complex, with dialogue and multiple sentences per page, and fun, with crazy messes and silly team clean-ups. The illustrations in this book are very straight-forward. They reflect exactly what the text says, without adding much more to the story. In this way, I don't think they are very important to the quality of the text.

This book series is great for kids who are familiar with the character, George, and enjoy reading about his most recent adventures.