The Birthday Ball

This is a book I read during Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon!

Let me preface this post by first saying that there are elementary books, and there are elementary books. Bookworm…what the heck does that even mean?

Well, I shall explain. There are books that belong in the same section meant for kids of elementary grade school- in my favorite local library it is called Juvenile Fiction. However, there are two kinds of books on these shelves. There are books like Joseph Delaney’s Spook series which are targeted toward that age group but still have developed characters, fantastic plots, and all ages can enjoy them without feeling like they are reading children lit.

Then there are books like The Birthday Ball. Simple plot, caricatures instead of characters, and no real development of any kind.

I am not saying one is necessarily better than the other, but I definitely have a preference as the second is not as versatile, IMHO.

The Birthday Ball was a good book. It was sweet, enjoyable, predictable, but satisfying. At 186 pages it was a quick read.

However, I also found it a bit too young for my individual reading. I am going to recommend this book to anyone who reads aloud to their children. My mom read aloud to me and my brothers for MANY years. I loved it up until about…12 when I started getting annoyed that I would have to wait a whole day to find out what happened next. Then I just started stealing the books and reading them on my own time. (Sorry Mom!) But I want to continue this tradition with my future children, and I think this book is perfect for such nightly reading. The simplified, stereotyped characters were very silly, and likely would be a joy to read aloud.

There was a plethora of body humor from the joined twins in the story that I could have lived without as I am not, and never have been a 10 year old boy.

Overall this story, while not great for readers of my age, is cute, and I would suggest it for any budding reader. For a person of that age, I give the story 4.5 stars.

As an adult I would give it 3 stars. It was too simplistic and there wasn’t enough relationship or character development for me to really appreciate it.