Judith Loske

Couldn't quite hold a four-and-three-quarters year-old's attention. Pretty pictures, but if you have a kid who actually focuses on the story, you'll have to do the heavy lifting explaining the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the book, narrated by a pet cat (that somehow survived?), only says that a black cloud destroyed everything and made Sadako sick. There are brief but informative notes in the back. The URL to crane-folding instructions seems to be broken. Maybe the story would have been better served if it was creative folding instructions, but as it is, almost half is just the cat imagining what it would like do do with Sadako when she gets better--which, obviously, she doesn't. Perhaps those imaginings could have had the instructions creatively incorporated into the background.… (meer)