Reviews for Mokie and Bik

The average rating for Mokie and Bik based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-12 00:00:00 Armesios Patapiou The rhyme and rhythm of this book is pure poetry. The author's voice so utterly perfect, the twinspeak funny and perfectly comprehensible. I wanted to read this book after finishing it, the second time out loud. This is one I have to own and will re-read whenever I need a smile and that feeling you get inside when you read the most perfect book. That doesn't tell you a thing of what it's about - but saying it's a children's story about twins who live on a boat and have adventures certainly doesn't begin to tell you anything about this book. It's how you feel when you read it that counts. And this one is..as I said...perfection.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-04 00:00:00 Martin Southworth Entertaining, but somewhat semantically confusing story about twins who live on a boat in a harbor with their mother and a nanny named Ruby while their father is at sea. The twins are quite rambunctious and are said to be always "overboard or underfoot". The narrative is often lyrical, but the juxtaposition of many of the syllables and odd made-up words could be frustrating for beginning readers, so I would recommend it be a parent and child read to help explain any misunderstandings. The black-and-white illustrations are very detailed and I loved the attention to the little aspects of a nautical life. I thought that the picture of Erik on page 33 was very reminiscent of Mr. Whiskers from the Cranberryport series by Wende Devlin. Still, if I was a bit dissatisfied with one thing with this book, it was that Mokie and Bik did not know how to swim. They are young, but I would expect that anyone who lives by the ocean in a boat would have swimming lessons from a very, very young age. I have taught swimming and I know that young children cannot be unsupervised by the water nor can you assume that they will retain swimming knowledge, especially with a big break between seasons. But to depict these children getting into a dangerous situation and then finally getting their first (rather unconventional) swimming lesson seems almost irresponsible to me. Our own girls had lessons year after year until it got to the point that they could not remember ever not knowing the basics of swimming and I would expect that to be more of the situation in this environment, too. I guess it's just my own bias, especially since I never took lessons until I was in college and as we lived for the first years of our daughters' lives on tropical islands near the ocean. I wasn't going to take chances with water safety.