The Bridge of the Golden Wood

The Bridge of the Golden Wood is a lovely retelling of a folk tale about earning a living. The illustrations are beautiful and the simple story of a boy taking the advice of an old woman and clearing a log to enable fish to eat demonstrates how helping others can result in a treasure. I love the simplicity of this story. I gave this four stars because of the visibility of the words on the page.

This little gem is a book to encourage children to not just find clever and innovative ideas, but to use those ideas to better their lives. A little boy comes across a stream where an elder woman is concerned about branches that are blocking the fish from passing along. She encourages the boy to find a solution.

Now the illustrations are lovely, which in this house is important to my children. There's this little fox that seems to follow the boy around that my two middle children thought was the cutest. And he kind of is.

At the end of the book there even a few suggestions for children to encourage them to build their own business and make their own money. I thought this was a nice touch and some of the ideas were things I hadn't thought of encouraging my boys to do. I think they plan on doing one or two this summer even.

I would recommend this book to any family with children. It's an all ages book that can be read allowed at bed time or read in their own reading time.

Rating:
★★★★★ = I loved this book and would reread it to my children in the future.

Genre:
Childrens books

Plot:
A young boy learns a valuable lesson from an old woman he meets during his adventures

Pros:
1.) Well illustrated
2.) A good read for kids of all ages
3.) The length of the book is good for children with short attention spans.
4.) Children can learn from this book, not just look at pictures.


Cons:
1.) It is short. This is a good thing for fidgety children, not so much a good thing for older ones.


Quotes:
"Trouble and Treasure"


My thoughts:
I read this book to my children ages 3, 5, and 9. The three-year-old particularly loved the photos and proceeded to ask a million different questions about them which I loved. Any book that gets the conversation going is a good book in my eyes! My nine-year-old enjoyed the book as well. He did end up reading the book on his own later that day which was surprising to me because he doesn't tend to read much on his own. Personally, I like that the book kept my kids interested. The bit at the very end with ideas for kids on how to be frugal was awesome too. All in all a great read. I would love to read more books by this author to my children. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book.