| Title | : | AJ's Neighborhood |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0983154481 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780983154488 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | Published March 29, 2022 |
An ordinary neighborhood comes to life and becomes extraordinary when seen through the eyes of a child as captured by Judy Campbell-Smith's charming text and Amanda Dowell's delightfully detailed illustrations.
AJ's Neighborhood Reviews
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AJ's Neighborhood is a charming story about facing fears in a new place, finding a helpful strategy to do so (making a map of his new neighborhood), and making friends along the way to the library. Both AJ and his apparently single mother are gentle and lovable. AJ, a mixed-race boy who always wears his colorful rain boots, meets people of all ages and descriptions as he makes this new place his own. The mother offers guidance without domineering. And the illustrations perfectly enhance this lovely tale. At first, I thought my super sophisticated, newly 7-year-old granddaughter would find this too pedestrian (no pun intended) for her You Tube tastes, but, as I read to her, she was really hooked by the illustrations and the childlike map excerpts inside the back cover. She liked recreating the journey from home to library. I was stunned a few days later when she chose AJ's Neighborhood as a book to read by herself...to me.
Although she is a star first-grade reader, I still expected she would need help to get through this, or perhaps give up reading it all herself, but I was wrong. With only an occasional nudge she conquered the longest words (whispered, remembered, continued) and stuck it out to the end.
AJ's Neighborhood is a hardcover book in the popular 8.5” X 8.5" square format, 24 pages with text on most of them. And that is where I drop my rating from a 5-star to 4-stars. I would throw in the extra half if I could, but I found the text crowded and not well-spaced. Lines of dialogue just continued from where the previous sentence ended with no paragraphing--just the quotation marks and dialogue tags--to indicate new speakers. Clearly the text was fit tightly around the illustrations, but as I watched my granddaughter read this, I could see her confusion at times, and watched her inadvertently skip a line while trying to follow the syntax. Given the age level to which this story is pitched, it works better as a read-aloud than as an independent read, but that is exactly what troubled me. When a young reader is eager to tackle material, it is incumbent upon the author to insist their text is as reader-friendly as possible. -
Lovely story about a curious young child that is exploring their world in their own way. A great introduction of navigating in your own community with little ones.
