Reviews for Little golden book classics

The average rating for Little golden book classics based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-28 00:00:00 Brady Willcox Although this book is 20 years old, it still works for story time. This morning, I read it to a group of preschoolers and their siblings, parents, & caregivers, and I think the whole room FELT it. I changed the text, though! Instead of saying, "Little Fish lost his mother...Where was she?" I said, "Little Fish lost his parents...Where were they?" I do not think this is absolutely necessary, it is not a biased or stereotyped presentation - but I would like to be inclusive of all people, and get the audience more & more used to the idea that parents, no matter what gender they may be, love and care for their children. I picked it from my storytime collection because I was doing my annual "fishes" theme - a favorite of mine! - and it's a book I like because it has a strong emotional resonance with minimal text, it has bright colors with a friendly, warm appearance, and it uses a sophisticated set of examples of other animal parents. (In fact, in the 15+ years I've been reading it, I think I've succeeded in answering a handful of word puzzles because *this* book taught me the word "genet.") This morning, a small group of 3- & 4-year-olds were uncommonly chatty and wiggly, and yet, from the very first page of this book, they held still and were raptly attentive - their empathetic connection to the little, lost fish who is separated from his parents was immediate and powerful enough to make them forget other issues. What did he do? What did he see? Who helped him? Who scared him? Would he get caught & eaten, all alone, without help or protection from his parents? It is not a complex book, and it has an unusual lopsided repetition that can take on different tones if you choose to emphasize either the question or the repetition. (For example; "Little fish missed his mother. Where was she? Where was she? Little fish needed his mother, yes he did." - you must choose if/how to alter your voice to read the repeated question.) Anyway - I wanted to put it on here, because it really STRUCK ME today that children as young as 3 years old can clearly empathize with the trauma of another creature/person/being who is separated from his/her caregiver, and it is a powerful, universal feeling of empathy. We children's librarians know it, but how can we as a society keep that feeling alive in people as they grow up to be adults? An adult who feels this story or even witnesses children feeling this story would always work for the health and happiness and cohesion of families and refuse to cooperate when their supervisors or even their president tells them to cause trauma to children.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-09 00:00:00 Terry Mort Very brightly illustrated, this story is about a little fish searching for its mother and finding many mothers and babies along the way - while not seeing his own nearby.