The Legend Of Ninja Cowboy Bear


Hello, ladies.  Look at that cover image down below.  Now back to me.  Now back at the cover.  Now back to me.  I'm on a horse! 

THREE PROS
*Hilary Leung will blow your mind with her superb illustrations and the vibrant colors she chose  
*Any opportunity to teach my son the concept of rock/paper/scissors this early in life is an opportunity I will seize -- modifying it with an even more awesome take on the concept is icing on the cake
*We played Ninja/Cowboy/Bear for roughly thirty minutes before bed tonight and it was just as fun the last time as it was the first

THREE CONS 
*David Bruins does some really good things with the writing (especially in the way he doesn't dumb it down just because it's for kids), but I found myself having to substitute complicated ideas on more than one occasion 
*I don't get why the bear overthrowing the frisbee led to these three best friends challenging each other to feats of skill 
*Even my boy commented on how many times the sky changed from day to sundown to night -- it seems odd that this contest would take more than one day

ONE DAD'S OPINION
I realllly wanted to give this a Buy because of all the entertaining exercise we got after the reading was done, but this IS a book blog.  As such, I feel obligated to drop it down a notch because the text didn't quite work for us.  This is probably a tad unfair since the intended audience might be older than three years old, but it's not completely without merit.  Taken purely as a story, it really does scream Borrow upon reflection.  Why would you need to pay for TLONCB if you can keep it for a little while, harvest the concept of the game, and then play Ninja/Cowboy/Bear sans hardcover going forward?  I wish there was a better way to reward Bruins & Leung for their efforts, but, alas, it looks like they went ninja when I pulled out a bear.  Maybe next time they'll throw a cowboy at me and win!
    

Buy / BORROW / Donate / Destroy



2 comments:

Perogyo said...

Doesn't the fact that the author and publisher donated a bunch of these books to the earthquake-affected schools in Tohoku Japan last year give it some more points? No? Just me then. :)

mysteryguy said...

In a perfect world, it would. But I am far from perfect!

Seriously though, that is quite a gesture. Readers: take note...