My choice book for the teen/adolescent chapter book analysis is Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson.

The book is about a fourteen year old girl named Melinda who is struggling to get through her freshman year of high school. From the very beginning she has low expectations of a good time and simply wants to get through the year in peace. She is extremely unpopular due to something that happened at a party (that isn't explained in detail until nearly the end of the book), and along with that she suffers greatly from depression and has a hard time keeping her grades up, getting invested in school activities, and making any friends and maintaining relationships with people, including her own parents. About halfway through the book it is revealed that she was raped at a party over the summer by an upperclassman and wound up calling the police without actually explaining what happened, causing many of the people at the party to get in trouble and even arrested, which ended many friendships for her as well as plummeted her reputation. She is unable to speak out about it until the very end, when one of her ex friends starts dating her rapist and Melinda tries to warn her. She is not believed until her rapist tries to attack her again for "spreading rumors" about him. The book ends with her finally being able to open up a bit more after all of this has come to light.

I thought the book was... okay. Almost good. A solid 6 out of 10. I didn't mind the subject matter, and in fact applaud the author for taking on such a taboo subject especially during a time in which it was rarely talked about, let alone taken seriously (the book was published in 1999, and only now are movements against sexual assault becoming acknowledged by mainstream media). However, I think the book failed its target audience. For a problem novel about sexual assault and rape, it hardly ever talked about the problem. This is not to say that I think Anderson should have written an intense and graphic rape scene or anything like that; I just think that if I were to seek this book out as a high schooler looking for comfort after being assaulted, I would have been disappointed, if not completely disheartened. Melinda spends the entire book suffering. We, the audience, don't know the root of her problem until three-fourths of the way in, and her problem doesn't even come close to being "solved" at all. While she is finally able to speak out about what happened at the end, we don't actually see any of her friends try to reconnect with her or apologize to her, we don't see her parents try to console her or comfort her, and we don't even know whether or not her rapist received any form of punishment. While it is implied that she's going to be okay in the future, we are simply told that, not shown it. Melinda gets absolutely no time to heal or recover from what happened to her. Rape and sexual assault victims know damn well what it feels like to hurt and have no one to go to after the fact, and while they may appreciate the mirror of seeing a fictional character walk in their shoes, it hurts to see only that and not get a happy ending. While it may be "realistic" for this book to not have a clean, concise happy ending, I think this is the one of the few subject matters that really, truly needs that. Victims of sexual assault know just how likely it is for their stories to end unhappily. Most rapists are never convicted, most victims won't come forward due to fear or more attacks and the likelihood that no one will believe them, and the chances of developing depression or PTSD or other forms of mental illness because of the trauma are extremely high. With all of that weighing on their minds, they would likely seek out books where people like them, people who have gone through the same trauma they have, can overcome it, have time to heal and have people to support them. This book didn't have that, and if I had read it in high school when I was in need of comfort, I would have only felt even more hopeless.

Along with that, I think the book is almost condescending to its readers. The target audience is adolescents, leaning more towards high school age readers. The main character is fourteen, most all of the novel takes place in a high school, and when the book isn't talking about Melinda's trauma (which is hardly ever), it is talking about life as a high schooler. However, the author who wrote this was an adult. And I'm not saying that adults can't write realistic portrayals of high school students, it's just that Anderson... did not. It felt like she didn't try that hard; in fact, in the back of the book where she answered interview questions, when asked how she researched what high school students were like, she said that she'd go to the Taco Bell at the mall and listen to the teens around her talk. That's it. That answer, quite frankly, horrified me. I can't imagine thinking so little of your target audience that you rely on gossip and stereotypes of what teens are like to base your serious novel about rape off of. Before I had known this book was written in 1999, I genuinely though the author had watched Mean Girls on repeat to write her characters. Nearly every character in this was a stereotype of some kind. Heather, Melinda's only friend for awhile, is a nobody who wants to join the popular girls who call themselves "The Marthas", she describes all the other students, including her ex-friends as jocks or geeks or European obsessed hipsters or whatever and it just felt so forced and fake. Rather than focus on Melinda and her trauma and how she copes with it, most all of the story seemed to be Melinda critiquing what most high schoolers are like. I usually don't mind that - I've never met a high schooler who didn't have some critiques about the students around them, myself included - however, it just felt so... pointless in this story. It felt like Anderson was trying her hardest to make sure the audience knew that this was in a high school, and her only way of doing that was to rip every student aside from Melinda of their humanity and simply make them walking caricatures of what bitter adults think those bratty teens are like. I know I sound harsh and I apologize for that, but it was exceedingly clear that Anderson didn't take her audience seriously. What really did it for me was that near the beginning, Melinda attends a pep rally and while watching the cheerleaders do their routine, she thinks about how they all must be sluts who have sex with the football team on the weekends and she wonders how they manage to look like pristine virgins by the beginning of the school week. She also continues to say that she bets that they all get group rate abortions before prom together. That's.... a horrible thing to have your main character, a victim of rape, say. While slut-shaming is exceedingly common in high school settings, I just simply can't imagine a victim of rape slut-shaming other girls like that. Being raped or sexually assaulted completely changes your perception of sex entirely. You tend not to call other girls sluts or whores or loose or anything like that and think critically of people who do, because you likely know from experience just how quickly the notion that you are a slut who will sleep with anyone will be used against you and invalidate anything you say if you try to speak out about assault. Anderson was so focused on making sure her book felt teen™ enough that she didn't bother to think about the fact that teens are still people and that they don't all think and act the same as what stereotypes you hear on T.V. and gossip you hear at the mall tells you. It was really upsetting and while reading this it was an immediate red flag that perhaps Anderson doesn't take her target audience nor the subject of sexual assault that seriously if she can't even stop her victim protagonist from being a slut-shaming misogynist. It seemed to imply that Melinda, specifically, deserves better but those other girls? What sluts! It was a horrible, though I'm guessing unintentional, message for a book about rape.

The major themes in this story are sexual assault, isolation, coping and eventual bravery. The story is about Melinda coping after being raped at a party. However, as the truth of what happened to her doesn't become apparent until near the end of the book, the story predominately focuses on her isolation. After the incident at the party, she has no friends to rely on. Along with that, she grows more and more silent, much to the annoyance of her parents. Rather than think about what happened to her, she copes by isolating herself and remaining silent, hoping to get through high school and the trauma by keeping it all to herself. However, finally, at the very end she confesses what happened to her when her ex friend starts dating her rapist. While she is not believed at first and initially regrets even trying to speak out, it took immense bravery of her to do so, and she is eventually believed.

I think the book's main message, despite taking so long to get to it, was that victims of assault should speak out about it. While it is painful to do so and while it may seem like no one will want to hear or believe what you have to say, being able to talk to someone can potentially stop the assailant from committing more crimes, and it can also help lead you down the road of recovery. I think. For a problem novel, this book took quite a long time to get to the actual problem, and because of that it's kind of hard to determine what the main message is. It felt like most of the message is that everyone in high school is a stupid brat except for the main character, which is a common theme in most high school books but usually isn't the main message. I guess another message is that you shouldn't believe rumors or think badly of people when you don't know their reasoning for things, (for example, all of Melinda's friends started to hate her for calling the cops at the party, when if they had just heard her side of the story they would have known she had a reason for it), but we are shown that perspective from the get go, so it seems more obvious than a message that must be taught. I guess since the book is called Speak, the whole moral of the story is to speak out about trauma and misdeeds.

Despite my many critiques of this story, I still think this story is important. I think the author could have done a better job writing a story about sexual assault from the perspective of teens, but this is still a good start considering that the subject of rape and sexual assault isn't touched upon at all in school. It is simply not taken seriously and though I'm still bitter that this book didn't focus on the problem as much as I wished it had, bringing awareness to such a taboo subject is still a good thing. Sexual assault isn't taken seriously in both high school as well as in the adult world. Victims' stories are hardly told, and when they are they are not believed and asked horrible, invasive questions like what they were wearing, if they had led their attacker on, if they were drunk, etc. Though I still believe this wasn't the best telling of a rape victim's story, it helped that none of those biases were there when it came to Melinda's story. The author never set it up to seem like it Melinda's fault. She never did anything wrong and it was clear from the start that it was her attacker's fault. I'm still mad that slut shaming did extend to other characters in the stories ([thirty year old mother voice] all those cheerleaders are such sluts guys, am I right......... that's how the teens talk, right? Girls liking one another? Impossible!) but this book was still a good start in letting rape victims know that their assault wasn't their fault, that they should speak out about what happened to them, and that they aren't alone. Now if only the book had told Melinda, and by extension other rape victims, that she'd get to heal and be all right, too.

My chapter book analysis is going to be on Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.

The book is about a young girl named Minli who is a poor farm girl in rural, desolate village in China. Her family doesn't have very much, and after hearing stories from her father about a powerful spirit called the Old Man of the Moon who can grant wishes and change fate, she sets out to go find him to change her family's poor fortune. The story chronicles her adventure as she meets many people - as well as magical creatures, like dragons, - on her way to the Old Man's home. She eventually does find the Old Man, but rather than ask for her family to become rich, she realizes that her family already has what it needs, and asks instead why her dragon friend cannot fly. Through his words she is able to help the dragon learn to fly. As thanks he gives her a pearl - which makes her family fortunate in the end - and he returns to his dragon ancestors, finally lifting the curse of poor weather that plagued her village. Her family and the other villagers now live happily with more crops and prosperity and all is well.

Though fantasy isn't typically my go-to genre, I liked the book. I'll admit it was a bit slow-paced at times, and I thought the multiple cut ins of various people telling Minli stories got a little grating, but for the most part I liked it. However, one thing I realized while I was reading the book, is that while parts of it were a little slow paced or predictable for my taste, I probably would have adored this book as a child. I liked fantasy books more when I was a little kid; especially stories like this where it seemed feasible that someone like me could go on adventure. (I remember reading Lord of the Rings as a little kid... and while it was realistic what with them constantly being injured, not knowing where they were going to stay for the night, and often being on the brink of starvation it made the possibility of an adventure seem frightening and dire rather than fun.) So reading children's media with themes of adventure was enticing to me, because I could see myself going on them. Along with that, who Minli was definitely would have appealed to me as a kid. While I am Japanese and not Chinese, these cultures still share many similarities, more so than with typical white culture. So reading about Minli's lifestyle and family was relatable to me, more relatable than most ye olden fantasies that take place in European villages and cultures. My family would eat rice with dinner multiple times a week, we use chopsticks and we do own some traditional ceramic bowls, as well. My sister, my mother and I all have dark hair and eyes like Minli, I owned some kimonos while growing up that looked sort of similar to what Minli and her family wore, and even her name, Minli, was more similar to my middle name, Michiko, than any other name I have read in western fiction as a child due to its over saturation of white characters.  So I feel like, had I read this when I was in grade/middle school, I probably would have loved it. And it would have felt more accessible to me than Lord of the Rings or even more child-aimed fantasies that I enjoyed like Peter and the Star Catcher, because I would probably be able to see myself as the characters in question, rather than sitting there and thinking well maybe that could be me, if I were a white girl.

The major themes in this story are predominately family, tradition and faith. Minli sets out on her adventure out of love for her family, to turn their fortune around and make them happy. The story often cuts back to her parents point of views as well, as they are desperately searching and waiting for their daughter to come home. Along with that, the dragon she befriends winds up saving her whole village by returning to his ancient family on the decrepit mountain that overlooks her village. Tradition also plays a huge role in the narrative - mostly in the vein of storytelling. The whole narrative relies heavily on stories. Minli only knows of the Old Man of the Moon through a story her father tells her. And the crisis with the mountain is only solved because of an old story. While I am not Chinese and therefore do not know much of traditional Chinese stories, I know from reading up about this book that the stories told in the story are based off of real Chinese legends, and that stems into this theme of tradition. And finally, the story revolves around faith. We learn that in one of the old legends, faith is what kept the happiest family on Earth so happy, and it is faith that kept Minli's parents going when they were scared for their daughter's well-being, and it was faith that Minli had to rely on her love for her dragon friend to know that the right thing to do was ask the Old Man about her dragon friend rather than her own fortune.

I think the book was telling us that family is important, as is love and believing in traditions and having faith in one another. Most of this I outlined in the last paragraph where I talked about themes. However, I think there is more to it than just what we see on the surface level. And by that I mean I think this story is telling us even more simply by who and what it's about. Had this story been written by a white author about white characters in a white country, it frankly wouldn't be that notable. Not that this story isn't good, but it's just a matter of fact that there are several fantastical adventure stories about children setting off on a great journey to find or do something. However, the fact that this story was written by a Chinese American woman about a Chinese girl in China makes it far more significant. During her Ted Talk, when she referred to her story and to Minli as "Chinese Wizard of Oz" and "Chinese Dorothy" respectively, it all made sense to me. This story, more than just having its in-text themes of love and family and tradition, also seemed to be saying that anyone can go on some fantastical adventure. Adventure and fantasy isn't localized only to Europe and white children. Children of all races and backgrounds can be the hero of their own fantasy... we just need to have their stories about them published.

While the illustrations in this story weren't the forefront of the novel, I really liked them anyways. Grace Lin clearly used her cultural background as an inspiration for the illustrations - the characters were drawn in a traditional, simplistic Chinese style that looks as if it was made of ink and silk. Her lack of detail helped examplify this - while sometimes a lot of detail can be a good thing, I think using minimal details for the character's designs (such as having Minli's hair be jet black with little details, etc.) made the style resemble that of ancient Chinese art pieces. Not to say that her art was plain. She paid close attention to backgrounds - the cover alone is covered in bright, vibrant colors, the sky filled with blossoming clouds and colored with bright spirals and swirls. Adding details like this while keeping the characters simplistic really emphasized its traditional Chinese style. This story could have been portrayed successfully even if it had been drawn in a more American cartoony style, but because the style was imitating ancient Chinese prints, it really did make the book seem like it may be an old fable rather than a contemporary story.

I think this book is important to share with children because, as Lin brought up in her Ted Talk, it is both a window for white kids who grew up with nothing but stories about themselves, as well as it is a mirror for marginalized children who have never seen themselves in a book before. While of course this story is exclusively Chinese and therefore isn't representative of every child in a typical classroom, it is still incredibly important. I grew up with predominately white stories. There were a couple stories with African American characters in grade and middle school, but aside from those rare instances, pretty much everything we were required to read was white. I didn't read a story with a Latin American protagonist until high school, and I have yet to ever have a required novel in which the protagonist is Asian or Native American. And even then, the few stories I've read with black and Latin American protagonists relied heavily on their race. Most stories about black people I've read dealt with the subject of slavery and racism in America; same goes with the one Latin American book I read. And while it's important to learn of these subjects, it's depressing because it feels as if marginalized characters aren't allowed to exist unless they're that - marginalized. Their stories are always about their race. It's horrible feeling to sit in a classroom and read story after story about how white people get to be wizards and heroes and scientists and princesses and so on and so forth while you either don't get to exist at all, or the few characters that are like you exist in a state of constant oppression where they struggle to survive until some kind-hearted white person decides to convince other white people to believe in their humanity. It's important for children of color - and especially white children - to learn of the histories of oppression and racism, but that should be in history classes, especially in the realm of grade school. When it comes to literature, children of color should be able to read stories about themselves, where they see characters of their races being heroes and princesses and wizards and scientists and so on. And this story, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, is a great example of a story like that. Even though I am Japanese, I would have loved this story as a child. I would've loved to be able to see a hero who looks even remotely like me when I was growing up. And I sincerely hope that this book inspires other writers of other cultures to write stories that are, for lack of a better word, stereotypical hero stories; but the hero gets to be anything but white and take place anywhere but Europe.

For this second blog posting, I will be analyzing El Deafo by Cece Bell

El Deafo is a graphic novel that is a mostly true story about the author, Cece, who contracted meningitis when she was a little girl resulting in her losing her hearing. The story is about her life in elementary school as she learned to live with her newfound deafness as well as her trying to fit in and find friends among her peers.

I liked the book, and I really like that it was a graphic novel. I love graphic novels, but more often than not they are seen as immature or not real literature because they for older kids/adults yet still incorporate illustrations as much, if not moreso, than they do text. There's also the idea that graphic novels can only tell simple, stereotypical stories (ie, things like Superman where theres a good guy who defeats the bad guy and saves the day, etc), but El Deafo proves that a comic book can be more than that. Along with that, it is a unique way to tell a serious story about disability and I don't believe it would be as successful if it were told in any other media. Having this story be told through illustrations in which every character is a bunny brings a more light hearted element to it. Because despite this story being about a serious subject matter it is still about children and children who suffer from the same disabilities would probably feel off put if the only way their stories could be told was through grim, serious novels. So framing it like this, in a colorful, lighthearted comic makes it more accessible to children who struggle, and for children who don't suffer from disability, it makes the idea of such a thing less scary and more normalized.

The major theme of this book is obviously living with disability. Even the title, El Deafo, indicates that this story is going to deal heavily with deafness. However, this story isn't just a nonfiction tale about hearing loss and what can be done about it. Bell's main audience for this book was young children, about elementary school age. The fact that she shortened this story so it took place throughout the span of her grade school years when she admitted in interviews it took quite a bit longer for her to completely accept what had happened to her is further proof that this is supposed to be a non-threatening story about disability that can bring comfort to young kids with similar issues. However, along with that, the story is about a common struggle used in stories about childhood and coming of age: that is, fitting in and finding friends. This story deals heavily with the childhood desire to fit in with one's peers, and this is something Cece struggles with deeply as her disability and the things she has to wear and do to deal with her disability force her to stand out. This book mainly deals with the subject of deafness, but it all goes hand in hand with accessible themes for children like the desire to find friends and not feel like an outcast.

With this book, I think Cece Bell was trying to portray her own childhood struggles as a deaf person in a more whimsical light; it was a serious thing that happened to her, of course, but it wasn't the end of the world and she managed to find away to make friends and live her childhood fairly normally despite her impairment. I think she told her story in such a manner to make other children with similar struggles feel less alone. Along with that, she managed to treat deafness as if it is something powerful, and something to be proud of. A lot of times when there are narratives that focus on disabilities, it is often framed around the notion of "well, how can we fix this so the character is normal again?". But the fact of the matter is that people with disabilities are normal and their disabilities aren't ones that can simply be "fixed". Bell doesn't regain her hearing but she does find newfound confidence in the powers her deafness and is able to live happily despite not being what society perceives as normal.

I was a big fan of the illustrations in this story. I felt that the illustrations helped convey the story in a way that text simply could not. This is not the first account of disability I've had to read. When I was in grade school, we were required to read a book about Helen Keller's teacher. The teacher also suffered from sight issues that eventually lead to blindness, however, I felt that that particular story didn't do a very good job in conveying it in a way that people who don't struggle with sight issues would be able to relate to. I remember there was a scene in the book in which the teacher got surgery which helped her see better for a short period in her life. She described looking out the window and being able to see the trees as far more colorful than she ever could before, and in far more detail. This was completely lost on me as someone who doesn't struggle with vision issues. Up until this point, whenever she described what a place looked like, or more appropriately, what it didn't look like, I would just fill in the gaps in my mind and envision the place anyways, even though that wasn't accurate to the character. So when she finally got to see the colorful trees for the first time, I couldn't relate to the joy because I had already been imagining things in color up to this point. Because of this, I think Bell's decision to have her story told as visual novel was immensely effective. If this had just been a written word autobiography, it would be hard to convey such struggles with readers who don't deal with them. For example, when she began to lose her hearing at the hospital, if she had just written "and sudden everything was quiet." it wouldn't do much for us as readers, as this whole thing is a book and we're not hearing anything to begin with. So it was clever of her to have the words in the graphic novel go from black to gray to gone entirely to convey her hearing loss. By doing that, it puts the readers in the exact same position she's in. She couldn't hear anything, and she conveyed that to us by making the dialogue she couldn't hear text that we couldn't read. I think putting this story in the form of a graphic novel was incredibly successful because rather than just telling us that she couldn't hear via text we saw for ourselves that she couldn't hear when everyone else could and were put in her exact position by being unable to read the other character's dialogue, making them silent to us as well.

I think this book was incredibly successful in telling a story that is not usually told in the context of children's literature. While I learned about Helen Keller and her teacher when I was in grade school, that was essentially it. Disability was seen as this thing to overcome, something that was rare and unfortunate but also something that seemed to come from the past. The way Helen Keller was taught to us, it seemed like disability was something that was suffered from in the past but didn't happen so much today. And when it did happen today, it is out of sight as children with disabilities had to go to special schools or classes to cater to them and we never had to see it first hand. So I think a book like this is a mirror for kids who do suffer from disability and want to feel like it isn't the end of the world, that they will be able to make friends and have fun and be able to grow up and their disability isn't something to be ashamed of, but rather something that can make them special and even be perceived as powerful. This book is also a window for kids who don't deal with disability to be able to learn about it in a way that isn't framed in the context of the past or from an outsider's point of view. This book didn't portray disability as something that used to happen a long time ago but as something that happens now, to anyone, and it forced readers into Cece's shoes by making things she couldn't hear impossible to read for them as well, teaching them what it's like to feel lost and othered by a disability. This book is an incredibly important read that I think would be incredibly useful to children both with and without disabilities to understand what it's like to have them and how they can still live happy lives despite them.

My children's book analysis is going to be on Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis.

The book is about a plant growing and a bunch of bugs lives as they watch the plant grow, try to make it home, see it get destroyed, then move on with their lives. Due to the fact that the book has words, but no actual language, we are to guess what is going on from the pictures alone and can see the bugs have disputes amongst themselves as well as friendships, love and tragedies as the life of the plant flourishes then decays.

I liked the book, though it took me a few reads to find all the details. I don't mind that, however. I'm not the target audience and while I imagine many people my age might not like it due to how cluttered and confusing it may seem, I liked that it took multiple read throughs to get everything because when I was a kid I definitely enjoyed reading picture books over and over to find as many of the little details that I had missed the previous time that I could. Had this book come out when I was a kid, I would have likely enjoyed it. For the most part, it made me happy. I liked the cute illustrations and the way the bugs interacted with each other. Despite being so simple they were very expressive. I liked how small details would slowly ease in as the pages went by - I didn't notice that the spider was creeping its way towards the plant a page or so before it actually happened. I think the only thing I found odd about the book was the text itself. Because there was so much of it and it didn't actually say anything, sometimes it was a bit distracting but I didn't think it took away from the actual illustrations or story too much.

I guess one of the major themes in the book would be the circle of life. The scene of the book never changes: we are in the same spot throughout the whole thing, watching as a sapling grows into a large plant then dies but, eventually, begins to grow again. Not only that, but there are other elements to this story that exemplify that as well, such as the bug entering the cocoon at the beginning of the story then leaving as a beautiful moth by the end. Along with that, I think there was also themes of general relationships. While we didn't get to know a lot of the bugs personally and never even got to learn any names, quite a few of the relationships were pretty clear. The grasshopper was lonely and looking for companionship - we first see him sitting on the log playing the violin by himself looking rather sad, but the next time we see him, he's playing with the recently-hatched moth and he looks much happier - even the music he was playing changed from flats to sharps. There's also the big roly poly that lives in the log. He seems like the older, reliable type, and this is shown by the other bugs relying on him for help as they build their homes, such as borrowing a ladder and a lawn chair from him.

It's hard to grasp what this book might be trying to tell us due to the lack of actual text and definitive conflict/resolution that most books have. I would guess that the book's theme of the circle of life means that the author is trying to tell us that life goes on, no matter what gets thrown at us. There's quite a bit of conflicts that occur within the book; from the bugs wanting to build a new home, needing help with that feat, having their home destroyed, etc, one thing remains consistent: they find ways around this without needless complication or drama. When they needed tools to build the house, they immediately asked the roly poly for help. When their house got torn down by the spider they were sad, sure, but they eventually moved on to what we can assume is another new home. And the plant died, but despite that it grew again and the world moved on. The author was likely trying to showcase that life has both huge and little problems but no matter what you will get past them and move on, as the world does.

The illustrations are incredibly detailed. They are the main thing moving the story along seeing how it becomes clear pretty early on that the text is mostly nonsense. Through the illustrations we get a setting of story, setting, and characterization. We see the progression of time as days and nights pass, as the plant grows bigger and gets more inhabitants, and eventually when the plant dies and the bugs are forced to find a new home, then, lastly, when the plant begins to grow anew. The illustrations also provide characterization as all of the characters have quite a bit of thought and detail put into them We know nothing about most of them but they're very expressive and the illustration went so far as to give them little humanizing details like the buttons and shoes on the grasshopper and the hat and pipe that the roly poly has. Aside from that, the illustrations are just pleasing to look at. Because this is a children's picture book likely made for beginning readers and children who don't read yet, I think the illustrations are successful as a tool of showing narrative as well as sparking interest. As I said earlier, I think the illustrations have a lot to offer children. I keep noticing new things every time I flip through this book, and I feel like that was intentional on the illustrator's part in ensuring that readers stay interested and intrigued.

As for the text, it was a little confusing it what it was trying to convey. Nothing in the book makes any actual sense. All of the bugs speak in a made up nonsense language and because of this I quickly turned out the text and instead focused all of my attention on the illustrations. However, I think there was a purpose to the nonsense text. As I said earlier, it was probably comforting for children who don't know how to read yet, to them coherent sentences are likely the same to nonsensical ones, so I imagine it would be comforting to read a book where the words are as lost on your parents or older siblings as they are on you. Going off of that, it was mentioned in class that this book would be extremely helpful for kids who are immigrants and don't know English or children who are multilingual and have a firm grasp on the language they hear at home but not so much on the language they hear at school. When I took French in high school, our teacher dedicated 20 minutes of the class to reading books in French and despite being in high school the selection she had us pick from were predominately children's picture books. I read Green Eggs and Ham in French and it was amazing how little I understood from a book I can so easily grasp in English. So I guess the confusing text in this book might have been there to make the reading experience equal for all readers. English speaking readers would be just as lost by the nonsense words as a reader who doesn't know a word of English. It would also help English readers understand what media - even simple media like a children's book - must be like through the eyes of someone who is just learning or doesn't know it. It's easy to forget how othering it can be to not know the dominant language when you're part of it.

While I ultimately think that most children would enjoy this book for the sake of the fun illustrations, I think this book might be a window or mirror based on the circle of life aspect. Not to get grim here, but children are going to run into problems and I can imagine this book being helpful when it comes to not getting overwhelmed about them. This book is, honestly, quite overwhelming. When the house is built and then the spider destroys it, it's overwhelming to look at the panicked but still unreadable text and the multiple illustrations going on at once. But despite the initial onslaught of panic, it eventually dissipates. The bugs move on and the plant eventually grows again. I think children could benefit from that message because, despite how scary and all encompassing a problem seems at the moment, ultimately it will end and they will be able to move on, because such is life. Something like that.