Reviews for When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth

The average rating for When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-09 00:00:00 Susan L Morris I generally try to avoid books that are written by Hollywood celebrities because I feel that they often get published based solely on the person's previously-achieved fame, but I was intrigued by what a four-year-old might put in her memoir. The cover gives a feeling that the little girl who will be telling us her story, has been crafting and especially, decorating a photo album or scrapbook. There is a picture of her in the middle of the cover, and odds and ends covering the border. The title page shows another illustration that suggests that this girl is very conscience of her looks. On the copyright page, we finally see, for the first time, a pattern that will be used throughout the book: "big girl" shoes, next to "baby" shoes. This big girl vs. baby theme is also visible on the dedication page. The older sister is painting with a paintbrush, while the baby uses her hands. On each page of the book, the four-year-old tells of something she did when she was a baby, and shows her baby sister doing just that, then shows what she does now that she is a big girl. Many of the pages have a border, but not a perfectly straight border like we see in many books, but a border with wavy lines that give the impression that we are looking into the past, even though the four-year-old is in the illustrations as a four-year-old. I also think that the uneven border makes readers feel that the girl made it herself. No four-year-old that I know can cut a perfectly straight line, even if they have a guide to follow. The homemade feeling also adds to the idea that this is a photo album that the little girl made for us to look at, as was suggested by the cover.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-03 00:00:00 Marie-Line Pelletier I really enjoyed this book! And it's not because it is written by Jamie Lee Curtis, but that does add to it. What I liked most about this book was how well Curtis wrote it from a four year old's perspective. It is about a four-year-old looking back to what she used to do when she was "little". Even though four is still pretty little, if you think about it, at that age, we all could not wait to grow up. We want to be big kids and do what big kids do. What we didn't realize was that at the age of 4, we were just beginning our lives. To us, a four-year-old is still a baby, but what does that make us to an eighty-year-old. The point I am trying to make within all this babbling is that, no matter how old we are, we still have some growing up to do. At the end of the book, the little girl says "When I was little, I didn't know who I was. Now I do." I think that we are constantly figuring out who we are at all times. Whether we are 4 or 80, there is always more that we can learn about ourselves and things that we will remember about ourselves when we were "little".