Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Buddy and Earl and the Great Big Baby
Illustrator: Carey Sookocheff
Picture Book Series
For ages 5 to 7
Groundwood Books, 2016 ISBN: 978-1554987160
Buddy the dog and Earl the hedgehog live with a girl called Meredith and her family. Today Mrs. Cunningham is coming to visit and she is bringing her baby with her. Buddy knows all about babies. He tells Earl that you can’t drive around in them, or plug them in, or eat them. Babies are “small and adorable” creatures who like to eat things off the floor and who sometimes “smell interesting.” Earl is delighted to hear this description. It sounds like a baby is very much like a hedgehog!
Earl soon discovers that the baby really isn’t like a hedgehog at all. For one thing it is not small and for another it is destructive and a nuisance. The baby breaks things, it licks Buddy’s chew toy, and eats Earl’s hedgehog food. When the baby is taken away to have a nap, screaming its head off, Earl does not feel at all sorry for the child. In fact he is thrilled that the baby is safe and secure in its “cage.” At least in the playpen the baby is not able to wreck things.
What Earl does not expect is that though the baby can be a nuisance, it can also be sort of sweet as well.
Buddy and Earl first two adventures greatly delighted many readers. This time the friends encounter something that they find very disruptive on the one hand, and very endearing on the other. How confusing it all is!
