Come Back, Ben by Ann Hassett, and: Pete Won't Eat by Emily Arnold McCully (review)

These two offerings from the Holiday House "I Like to Read" series offer simple storylines, lots of vowel sound repetition, and an extra-large font size to make reading more approachable for new readers. In Hassett's Come Back, Ben, a boy flies off on a balloon past a series of passers-by until eventually landing on the moon, where he fills his pocket with moon rocks and sends himself floating back to earth. Cut-paper and ink illustrations in bold primary and secondary colors depict a fantasy-touched world where windows, kites, and mountains can talk. In McCully's Pete Won't Eat, a pig named Pete refuses to eat his bowl of green slop; just when Mom caves and makes Pete a sandwich, Pete decides to give the slop a try and finds that he likes it. McCully's line and watercolor illustrations feature a pastel cast of pigs and a particularly putrid bowl of green slop, and there is plenty of text-to-image pairing within the story to guide young readers. Both stories excel at their purpose—they are truly first readers designed to give newly independent readers a sense of early mastery with reading alone. Of the two, the Hassett offers a more fanciful storyline that departs from simple domestic themes, but either would be a welcome addition to a first reader collection.