The Tale of the Teeny, Tiny Black Ant

PreS-Gr 2—These books are intended to teach lessons about life; when those values are part of the title, it's hard to avoid being hit over the head with the message. In the first book, a tiny ant doesn't have the strength to climb the wall that leads to his home when carrying something heavy. Because of this, he's the only ant in his colony that has never given his queen a gift. One day a bird drops a feather and Ace is determined to carry it up the wall to his queen. He picks it up in his "pincers" (a term used three times—lobsters have pincers, ants have mandibles) and lugs it upward. Cheered on by his caterpillar friend, Ace is successful. In Joni, readers learn of the plight of a star that has fallen out of the sky and desperately wants to return to his constellation, the Big Dipper. Joni tries to throw him back, but doesn't have the strength. Eventually, she assembles a team of classmates, all with the individual skills needed to build a catapult to hurl Al back into the sky. Both books are forced, cutesy, and contrived to prove a point, and the cartoon art fails to engage readers. It will take a skilled actor/reader to present these books with sincerity.—Maggie Chase, Boise State University, ID