Henry and Mudge and the Careful Cousin

Henry and Mudge and the Careful Cousin By Cynthia Rylant and Illustrated by Sucie Stevenson

This chapter book is a very simple one for beginning readers. My second grade child study student picked this one out to read. She enjoyed it because of her love for dogs and Mudge the dog is one of the main characters. This book is about Henry's cousin Annie coming to visit. She is a very big girly girl. She wears all pink dresses, doesn't like to get dirty, and won't eat Henry's cookies from underneath his bed. After a while of Henry not being able to figure out anything to do with Annie they finally try playing frisbee and have a blast. Annie ends up loosening up a little and they have a great time together. It is like a picture book because there are pictures on every page, but there are more sentences on these pages then most picture books. The sentences though are very short, and very simple for example there is a page in which every sentence starts with "She..." The text is all the same and in clumps either at the top of the page or the bottom, but when a character is thinking the font is italicized so they can emphasize this action. Also, it is broken up into chapters which make students think they are reading harder books than picture books, even though they may not be. It's not my favorite book but I though this was a good book, it was a cute story.