Title: Brain Meets the Mes
Author: Menesh Patel
Illustrator: Elena Oplakanska
Date: 2022
Quote: "Once upon a time there was a Super-Cat called Brain."
His home was on the planet Aurelius, but he suddenly found himself on a different planet, where he met a dragon, Mother Me, with three young "Mini-Mes." Once he's in their den the dragon family discuss how to cook him, but Brain finds a way to escape.
But he still has to find a way back to his own planet. There will be more rhyming picture books to tell how he accomplishes that.
This terribly whimsical picture book is a little rough around the edges for use with children. Its verse form is basically a Nashery, a form that seems to have great appeal for Indian writers in English. Individual stanzas of a Nashery can resemble perfect or imperfect couplets in older forms, but a Nashery is supposed to be varied with irregular rhythms and rhymes strained into place for comic effect, so that's acceptable. However, the storyline also mentions the dragons' "wine collection," and the punctuation does not reflect the quirks of individual speech but is just plain inaccurate. A good picture book should teach children accurate spelling, grammar, and verse form if it's written in verse. So this one's unlikely to make it into libraries or classrooms.
It might still appeal to an adult who collects children's books, probably for readng aloud with children, and who can explain that this is only an e-book, not a real printed book, because the author made some mistakes in writing it. I don't think it can hurt children to know that even real grown-up writers make mistakes.
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