A first day review for your reading pleasure.

Herman Parish.  Amelia Bedelia’s First Day of School.  Illustrated by Lynne Avril.  Greenwillow, 2009.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

I don’t mind Herman Parish keeping the Amelia Bedelia series alive, but this…what?  This can’t possibly be a prequel.  Too contemporary.  Neither a retcon so much as an alternate timeline.  Let’s think about this before we go any further.  Does Amelia Bedelia, beloved as she is, really call for an alternate timeline?

This book just doesn’t work for me.  Amelia Bedelia’s appeal is in her literal interpretation of idiomatic phrases.  Funny for an adult, but not so much for a kindergartner.  Five year olds interpret language literally by default.  In extreme cases, like when her teacher asks her to glue herself to her seat, it can be funny, but less obvious misinterpretations are hardly noteworthy.