Am I Big Or Little?

Rating:
Summary: A perfect board book for your tiny big girl!
Review: This is a sweet story of a little girl asking her mother if she is big or little. With each question, her mother lovingly answers each of her daughter's questions.The last 2 pages just make this book special to me.... " Yes, Sweet Pea You're like a big present in a little box. A Present for you, Mommy? Of course- just what I always wanted! What wonderful words to say to your daughter, and words that should be said often, if not every day! I know without a doubt, my daughter is a wonderful gift!

Tracy Dockray does a fantastic job illustrating this book. The pages aren't cluttered up, but focus on the little girl and her mother and are done using both watercolor paints and pencils, that just gives the pages a softness.

I remember when my brother was born, my mom started calling me her Tiny Big Girl, even though I was 2, it made me feel big, when I really was little! I am so pleased that this boardbook found it's way into my hands and now heart! And will absolutely be perfect for your tiny big girl who is just wanting to be big!

Rating:
Summary: Many Big Things Come in Little Packages
Review: This is a terrific book that doesn't just talk about the sizes, big and small, but the possibilities. The child has a enormous amount of fun being both big and little, with the story focusing on the things that she can do. The book is written as a conversation between the child and her mother. It reminds me a little of "The Runaway Bunny". The conversation is not as protective but the love shows through. It also reads smoothly so it is a good book to read aloud.

Rating:
Summary: A really sweet book
Review: This is a terrific book that doesn't just talk about the sizes, big and small, but the possibilities. The child has a enormous amount of fun being both big and little, with the story focusing on the things that she can do. The book is written as a conversation between the child and her mother. It reminds me a little of "The Runaway Bunny". The conversation is not as protective but the love shows through. It also reads smoothly so it is a good book to read aloud.

Rating:
Summary: Many Big Things Come in Little Packages
Review: When I read this book, it made me remember when I was just a little kid. All the times I had been too little for things that other bigger kids could do, yet I never forgot all the things that I could do because I was little. Things such as the book said, getting a piggyback ride down the stairs, crawling under my bed, and being able to ride in a stroller everywhere. All the younger years that were so easy and yet went by so fast. This book lets me remember all the good times that I had when I was that age. Especially all the times I will never forget, for one, when I would go to weddings or other big things, and be able to dance on my daddy's feet. Or when I would play with my older cousins and they would swing me around and I was so small it would make me feel like I was weightless. Yet now I am too big to do most of those things and I miss that feeling, but I have learned that being older brings great things such as responsibility. So if someone asked me if I knew a good children's book, I would have to say Am I Big or Little? by Margaret Park Bridges.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: Written over the course of one night under a reportedly chemical-induced trance with Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" as aural accompaniment, Margaret Park Bridges put the psychedelic literature world on it's gnawed-off ear when her visionary "Am I Big or Little?" hit the bookshelves. Basic in it's premise yet terrifying in it's deeper complexities, Bridges posits bold existential questions rooted soundly in everyday conventions.

Scholars have noted the link between "Am I Big or Little?" to both the works of Lewis Carroll and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." These comparisons are futile, however, as the obvious chemical backdrop of these works bears little resemblance to Bridges' use of the chemical as explicit vehicle to increased mental scope. This is territory previously mined by Aldous Huxley in "The Doors of Perception." The proceedings aren't a hallucination per se. Rather, the hallucination is as much a character in this book as Icarus, Richard Nixon, Andre the Giant, and of course the still undead ghost of soccer great Pele. Plus, since we see the mother spike her own coffee and her daughter's Strawberry Quik long before her daughter's crazy straw find it's intended target, the reader knows that the story flow could lack convention once the deliciously sweet milk has been fully ingested. Particularly unnerving is the mother's first assessment of the girl's size: "You're bigger than a Glock 33 subcompact .357 pistol, but smaller than an LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile armed with 10 Avco MK 21 warheads,way way way smaller." Tracy Dockray's fascinating illustration on this page evokes both the mind-expanding comfort of the mushroom and the terrifying panic of the mushroom cloud. This is obviously material with some weight to it as I found out the first time I read it as a bedtime story to my suddenly very awake three and a half year-old son.

What is the message that Bridges is trying to convey in "Am I Big or Little?" It's impossible to say, and I would say that Bridges herself can't answer this question herself, nor would she want to. Read for yourself and to your young ones and establish scary new frontiers of knowledge and philosophy of your own.