My Day at the Beach in Hawaii

Great concept and awesome illustrations, but the rhymes are convoluted and seem pretty forced. Not a good pattern, although on some pages the use of repetition saves the prose. The illustrations are a big help. It has a really cute story line, regardless of the odd rhyming patterns, and our son likes to turn the pages. The entire book is in the shape of the bucket. I also like it because w/each page, the number of items added to the bucket increases (like the 12 Days of Christmas song) and the illustration shows the bucket getting fuller, so it visually teaches accumulation. There are some Hawaiian words in it (like the word for grandmother, "tutu") that are not explained, so parents may have to do a little aside when reading aloud if the child is not familiar with some basic Hawaiian. For us, the concept and the illustrations save the book, but some of the prose keep it from being a 5-star review. With a little tweaking, it'd easily be a 5-star review, though. However...I know of many other books from different publishers that have the same problems with the writing. We have many books from this publishing house, which consistently produces such great books that I guess we're a little spoiled--we're used to much more "natural-feeling" writing from them. Overall, would still recommend.