Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Just going to say it: 2 stars is forgiving & I guess I'm "that" mom. I bought this at a book fair after skimming all the five-star reviews on Amazon for my emergent reader and 1. The text is NOT 'great for a beginning reader', as other reviews have stated, the words themselves are neither simple phonetically nor high frequency word laden, and developmentally-speaking, kids may enjoy this being read to them with a lot of infection but they aren't going to 'get' the attitude/sarcasm/etc while they are reading themselves until they are a little older. 2. Troubling themes!! The movie Inside Out is fantastic and full of great talking points regardinggn emotions and empathy - these books are what happen when the source material is too pimped out to merch: the characters are not even just flat Distilled versions of themselves, they also bring new negative conversations/concepts. Has your child recently experienced a death in the family? Fear's "I consider every day we don't die a success." might give you pause. Does your child eat vegetables or value food? You won't find that concept applauded here, just Anger & Disgust at broccoli on pizza ("Ew, that isn't even a food!"). And lastly, do you like camping, nature, road trips and/or letting your kids get dirty? Because BTW, it's disgusting-central. Disgust's lead in to why she hates camping includes this culturally ignorant gem of things that are the most disgusting, "not having any running water. I don't do smelly." Wow. Precious. If you have or would like to teach your kids about what emotions might parallel with the experience of not having access to running water, toss that book out. Joy & Saddness are the only two books without much issue but alas don't really capture the movie's spirit either - maybe the emotions are just better working together dynamically as they do in the film, and not independently. My kids like looking at the covers and pictures, and pulling the books out and back in to the unique cut-out case. So close to a really great set! - I wish my expectations where not so high! Had I been able to flip through the pages I would not have purchased, these are .50 books printed with much nicer paper and binding.