The Trotters of Tweeville: Zavis DaMavis

Zavis DaMavis is off to school with his lunch and a few words of wisdom from his mother on how to treat others. But what did his mother say? Zavis can't remember her exact words. As he goes through the day, helping his friends and being kind to to everyone he meets, he is already following her suggestion but doesn't realize it.

This illustrated story gives the readers and their parents the opportunity to discuss how they can be helpful to people all around them in small ways that will actually be a huge help. I love that the writer tackled this subject with rhyming words; although, at times the rhymes were not readily apparent. It would have helped if the words that rhymed were consistently at the end of the sentence. Perhaps, it would be fun for children to try to figure out where the rhyming words are.

I think this book has an important lesson, and I recommend it to parents and teachers.

What a sweet book! Written in Dr Seuss-inspired rhyme, it tells the story of a little boy called Zavis DaMavis whose mother teaches him to treat others as you'd want to be treated yourself. The story is full of life examples children will easily relate to on how to apply this important lesson.

The writing is absolutely fantastic. My constructive criticisms for future books would be:
- to maybe make the rhymes clearer by putting the words you want to rhyme at the end of a line.
- to make the rhyming sentences shorter so the rhymes are clearer
- to take note of the rhythm of the text as well as the rhymes to reach that little closer towards excellence :)
But this is me being very fussy - I liked the writing and the story very much!

I wasn't a huge fan of the art style in this book. It felt a little amateurish to me and I felt it didn't do justice to the beautiful words which is such a shame. For little children, the artwork is at least as important as the words (if not more so), so this is something I'd improve in future books to bring the level of the book up significantly. Only because of the artwork, I'd take 1 star off the rating from 5/5 to 4/5.

It also took me a while to understand the title of the book: "The Trotters of Tweeville" - who are the Trotters? They are not mentioned at all in this book, and we're never told the story is set in Tweeville - so the title felt completely unconnected to the story. It was only after finding another book by the author that I realised this was the name of the *series* of books and not of this individual book. The actual title is "Zavis DaMavis", the name of the child the story is about. If I were the author I'd work on more catchy and more relevant titles for each story other than just the child's name, so that readers know roughly what subject the book will be about just from the title.

All in all, would I recommend this book? For me, the brilliant writing wins out over any reservations I had about the artwork. Based on that and on the feel-good story and the lesson it teaches, I would absolutely recommend this book.