Reading to Willow - The Very Busy Spider

What Daddy thinks:
Eric Carle must have walked outside one day and saw a spider spinning a web. When he walked back in later in the day the spider was still at it. Maybe he thought: "What a busy spider. Oh snap, I just stumbled on the perfect sentence to repeat in my next book."

Anyway this book has a unique feature. An embossed spider's web. So you can feel the web as it grows. A neat idea that's lost on my daughter. As with other Eric Carle books, every page introduces a new animal, the simple repetitive writing helps your child to learn to read (and you to memorize) What's missing? How about the part where after the spider catches the fly she injects digestive juices into the fly to digest it in situ, then eats it later? Okay maybe that's a little advanced, but hey kids gotta learn sometime, no?

What Mommy thinks:
I like the spider's work ethic. She is never enticed to quit her work to go and "play" with the other animals no matter how many times she is asked. I like that this book has lots of animals and what they like to do. It's a great opportunity to teach Willow the sounds that the animals make. She is always in favor of sound effects. As for the spider eating the fly, well that's just nature at work.

What Willow thinks:
For a kid that seems to grab at everything, Willow doesn't really grab for this book. Why is that ironic? Because this is the one book she is supposed to grab for, in order to feel the spiderweb. Oh well. She seems to like it just fine and, again, she will appreciate it a little more when she is a bit older.