Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

I have been wanting to do a whole series of posts on this book so here's the first...
Although my family had this book while I was growing up, I rarely remember reading it. I'm not sure if it was too long for me to listen to, too long for my mom to read to me, or too many big words for my sister, Sara, to pronounce. Either which way, it's now one of Andrew's favorite books and I love it. I appreciate for so many reasons so I wanted to tell all of you why... Also some random things about it.
Reason #1: There is an advertisement on the last page in the book. Below is a picture of the page before the advertisement... We'll call this exhibit A.

Did you notice what it says? It reads, "Please turn the page." How polite! (Warning: I got out my soapbox and am currently climbing up...) In today's advertising, they try to "trick" us into wanting their product. "Sure," they say, "they may not be hungry... But what if we show them our big cheesy burrito at 10pm during their favorite TV show and remind them that we're open late? Then they'll be hungry!" My response: "Thank you for fattening us up! Heaven forbid I forget my 4th meal!" From my sales days, I know that you're supposed to fill the customer's need with your product... and if they don't have that need, you create one. Welcome to America, land of consummerism!Reason #2: First of all, I'm not entirely sure what's up with the scary little black (sorry, african-american) blob. Is he a monster? A strange sea creature? A mix between a bear and a hippo? More importantly, I think it's so cute that they put an expiration date- which is a good thing, being the date is 5 days before my 27-year-old sister's birthdate! I just think that advertising was so cute and innocent back in the day. Wasn't life so much simpler then???

3 comments:

Sara Edwards said...

I totally remember that book! I also remember not liking it (maybe because of the advertisement). I do remember reading it once and thinking, "How come we don't read this one? It's pretty good." Although I don't recall the storyline. Maybe we didn't like the name Sylvester. Or maybe it was the way the pictures looked so washed out. Maybe if they had marketed it better to us we wouldn't have missed out on such a good story. Hmmm...

And what up with the big word comment? Are you calling me out? Do you want to have a big word reading contest now? Bring it on!!! :)

Cheri said...

No, no, no. I, of all people, would never make fun of someone else's vocabulary size. In a future post, I will be mentioning the large words, etc in the post. Please, be patient.

And, yes, it does have an excellent storyline.

Flo Paris said...

I think I would like this book.
Are those horses or donkeys? They are cute all hugging at the end.