Patty the Police Car

Today, my little man picked up a book that I have never ventured to open. Something about the faded lavender cover makes this member of the Better than Broccoli Book series look old and dirty to me and, thus, completely undesirable.  But, to it's credit, he seemed really engaged for a number of minutes.  Hmmmm....rating this book will not be easy.  Let's see where it falls.

THREE PROS

*While I would not qualify this as a true pop-up book (despite what the cover says), the 3-D effect presented on each page makes up for a rather boring story

*Paints the police departments of America in a happy shade of blue (channeling my inner Bob Ross), metaphorically speaking

*Similarly, the whole community seems to be a joyous, interconnected place

THREE CONS 

*Part of the reason my son was so into the book today was that he could very easily rip the pseudo-pop-ups apart, to the point that the first page looks like the *morning after* a torrid kiddie book & cardboard box love affair

*The key to the third page involves the officer putting the car's siren on; yet, it looks like the siren's already been on since the page before

*If we're teaching kids about traffic safety, let's not have the red and the green on a stoplight in the same vertical spot (c'mon people, it's little details like this that should be caught by editors in under a second)

ONE DAD'S OPINION

If you just look at my pros and cons, it would appear that the book has more going for it than against it.  But that first con is a doozie. Suppose you didn't know that the pop-ups can be ripped off with the slightest of ease by a child of 20-ish pounds.  Wouldn't you want to see some sort of warning on the book that parental supervision is necessary given that Chinese cardboard is not on the USDA food pyramid?  [Perhaps the person at Better than Broccoli Books who named the company has a sick sense of humor.]  When you combine this situation with the idea mentioned at the beginning (about the deathly ill cover art not totally reflected in my photo below), it's actually not that hard to settle on this as a Donate, and preferably a Donate to a place where the children don't directly handle the books.

Buy / Borrow / DONATE / Destroy