Ms. Goshsquash

I love the watercolours illustrations there beautifully. My favourite is the cow in the field. Ms Goshsquash story shows children that they have consequences about the things they do and to other people . This story tells the story of three children who are bad and because of this Ms Goshsquash needs to show them them some home truths so they can change there behaviour. This is good story for you children to learn about there actions.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.

Ms. Goshsquash is a rhyming, lyrical book that tells the story of three children who are used to being naughty and getting their way. One day, whilst they are skipping school, the local witch Ms. Goshsquash decides to teach them a lesson to make them see the error of their ways.

The message of this story is easy to understand and will offer a great lesson that children don’t always realize - their actions have consequences and can hurt people they care about, I think this will be a great addition to any library.

The watercolor illustrations in this book are beautiful, with a full and soft color palette. I loved the yak and wish we saw more of Ms. Goshsquash’s farm.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for an eARC.

Review

It is the first experience that I have with Netgalley, and I hope I can have many more. I like reading children’s books because they are beautiful and I love seeing the illustrations. Also, I’m an English teacher here in Brazil and I think that using children's books in the classroom with my students help them not only to learn the English language, but also to understand its use and all its possibilities, and to develop emotionally to express themselves in a second language.

I’m going to start talking about the plot. I think that narrating experiences and reading them help enact the feeling and the experience on ourselves, especially for children reading about other children. They may not act like Tilda, Roscoe and Billy, but they can see through their eyes and understand that behaving in a way that hurt and bully others is not nice at all. I am also a fan of everything that includes magic and witches, especially good ones that are the main character or help the others. I would like to have Ms. Goshsquash powers of controlling time and space - because that how she seems to know about the children and to have them in the classroom at the right time. I think that maybe adding two or three pages showing the kids doing good deeds would give even more emphasis to the lesson taught by the book, but besides this, I have to say that I enjoyed it very much and I would use it with my students.

About using it to teach English, it would be very useful because of the rhythm it is written in and all the possibilities to work out the phonic skills of my students. As English is not our first language, rhyming and rhythm in stories are very helpful.

To conclude my review, I would like to compliment the illustrations. I myself love watercolor images and the illustrations in the book complemented the magic of the story pretty well. I have to say that my favorite is Ms. Goshsquash and her bison, the illustration is really cute.

I would recommend this book for teachers, parents and also for learners of English as second or foreign language.

Very good watercolours illustrate this full-colour rhymed story, but it features a lot that doesn't really hang together. From the very first line, that tells us the name of the fantasy town – a name of zero consequence to anything – to the fact the title character has a yak – again, useful for putting fun into the artwork but for nothing else – we're deluged with extraneous stuff. The story could just have been allowed to run its natural course without these wacky details, for it's simplicity itself, albeit packed with the unanswered. Ms Goshsquash has a way with magic portals, and a magic mirror, that can show a naughty kid the error of their ways, and so she uses them on three children here, but we don't know if they're deserving of being snatched away to fantasy-land and given such a lesson. Nor why the cow is there.

The rhymes are quite well sustained, but the meter and length of the line does vary a little too much to call this a classic. If I remember this for anything it is for the artwork, however, with watercolour a slightly unusual choice for getting character and faces portrayed as well as they are shown here. There is an outside chance a guardian or parent could use this book multiple times to instil the idea of the kindly-yet-witchy Ms Goshsquash as a potential consequence for our bad behaviour, but making sure this gets re-read might be a struggle too much. I don't wish it ill, but I did wish for it to have had more concision. Three and a half stars.

This is such a cute story! I absolutely loved the illustrations and the name Goshsquash will be so catchy for children. This was a fun and magical take on how to address bullying by making children reflect on their behavior and how it affects others. I would definitely purchase this for a child!

I read this book the other night and found the illustrations to be beautiful, but the story slightly lacking.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this arc.
This was such a delightful children’s book talking about how you shouldn’t be mischievous and go to school. Ms. Goshsquash sounds like an urban legend who helps kids be better and that is just so folktake like. The watercolour illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, will definitely be checking out the illustrator.

A simple story about an old lady named Ms. Goshsquash who, while looking deceptively sweet, has her own method of punishing children who have been naughty in any way. She finds three children bunking school one day and proceeds to give them a taste of their own medicine, but in magical ways.

While the story might be a little scary for really young children, it can also be seen as adventurous and fun-filled, depending on what kind of child is reading it. A naughty child might be apprehensive and a good-natured child will be glad to see bullies being punished. The message of the book is quite clear: your actions always have consequences so you need to behave better.

The writing is in rhythmic verse, but some of the rhymes were a miss for me. They seem to be there just so that there was something to rhyme. For instance, there is a yak who has absolutely no role to play in the story but exists for the sole purpose of rhyming with “black”. (The irony is that ‘yak’ and ‘black’ don’t rhyme!) The meter of the sentences varies a lot. In some cases, each line is so long that there’s an entire long sentences rhyming with another long sentence. It almost seems like a prose story than a rhyming one in such instances.
The illustrations looked quite unusual with in their pastel-like strokes but in watercolour. They add to the appeal of the book by making it seem less portentous.

Overall, a good read but not exceptional. This could be a good addition to libraries.

Thank you to NetGalley and DartFrog Books for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖
𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Ms Goshsquash
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: Lola Coleman
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Children's Fiction
𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

𝐆𝐔𝐒𝐇:
• Great introduction or place for discussion on the concept of consequence for children
• The illustration had a gorgeous, soft colour palette and utilised a watercolour style and thus evoked a gentle atmosphere whilst reading
• The rhyme and rhythm flowed nicely

𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐄:
• Due to the art style and texts, some sections were difficult to see/read

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬: empathy, actions have consequences

𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫: young children (4+)

Thank you to @NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 𝐌𝐲 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠: 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐣𝐨𝐲.𝐜𝐨𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞.

Ms. Goshsquash is a timeless tale of naughty children being punished. The watercolor illustrations are gorgeous with an uneasy feeling with the motion. The rhyme scheme of the book is wonderful and flows beautifully.

The book looks at self-reflection as a way for kids to understand what they are doing is wrong. It wasn't overbearing, and it can be understood easily by children in this age group. I definitely recommend it.

One thing I noticed in the book is some of the words fall into darker parts of the art, making it a bit difficult to read the words. There are some times where the lines of the book also seem disconnected because the book was formatted to fit the illustration and disregarded the confusion starting a new line mid-thought would create, but this is minimal and did not distract much from the reading overall.

I really like the watercolor illustrations in this book. The story is a little older for my 3 year old but cute all the same. The overall premise is kinda creepy but I really liked the yak. The story and lesson to be learned is great though