Review of Mike & Alex

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Laila Hashem
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Review of Mike & Alex

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[Following is a volunteer review of "Mike & Alex" by Peter van Wermeskerken.]
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mike & Alex by Peter van Wermeskerken is a children’s book that follows Mike and Alex, a giant rabbit and a wild boar who help animals who have been injured by humans. One day, they find a whale named Wally who has been harpooned and help him remove the weapon from his body. With Wally healed, Wally takes them on a trip around the world where they meet new friends and run into unfamiliar obstacles. With the help of their new friends, Mike and Alex must learn how to overcome these problems and help animals in need along the way.

This book has a lot of positive aspects, the first being the beautiful and colorful illustrations depicting significant scenes in each chapter. Such illustrations will grab young readers’ attention and help them visualize the story better. Among the positive aspects are also the songs that the characters sing in some chapters with interesting and creative rhymes. The story indirectly discourages readers from pollution and harming animals through showing them the effects of such actions from the animals’ point of view. Additionally, it presents themes that should be instilled in children from a young age, such as the importance of helping others and the fact that collaboration can help us overcome difficult problems.

The author made an interesting choice when it came to the characters, including some characters with bad attitudes or beliefs who undergo positive character arcs. This teaches children that it is okay to change one’s beliefs no matter how old one is or how long one has had these beliefs. For example, Wally the whale was eventually convinced to use his privileged position to help unfortunate animals when, before, he had looked down on creatures who were not as privileged as he was.

The characters were very different from one another in terms of backgrounds and abilities, but their differences only strengthened their bond, which will instill in readers a sense of open-mindedness and a love of diversity. For example, Alex and Mike were often referred to as ‘land animals’ in contrast to Wally, who was referred to as a ‘sea animal.’ As a result of this difference, Mike and Alex were unable to travel through the sea, a problem which Wally helped resolve by taking them through the sea in his mouth. Additionally, Wally was quick to ask them questions about concepts from their background that he did not understand, such as the meaning of a forest.

I give this book a rating of four out of five stars. I did not give it a perfect rating due to some negative aspects I could not overlook. An example of this is the usage of the curse word ‘damn’ in two instances in the book, which I do not believe should have been done in a children’s book. Additionally, the usage of character names followed by colons to indicate dialogue distracted me from the story. I believe it would have been better to utilize dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking. Lastly, the fact that a character’s speech impediment was written out in his dialogue explicitly, through the omission of the letter “o,” made that character’s dialogue very difficult to follow.

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Mike & Alex
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