Children's Books
A Whale of a Mistake Review
The watercolor details just make my heart happy.
We received these books in exchange for an honest review.
Review Date: April 2nd, 2020
Written By: Ioana Hobai
Cover Copy
When you make a really, really big mistake, it can make you feel stuck nor weigh you down or even swallow you whole!
After a girl is carried away by her whale of a mistake, she feels adrift. What if she can’t space and the whale swims out to sea with her forever? What if this is her life now? But as her journey continues, the world around her, including the sky of shooting stars and even the whale itself, helps her explore all the feelings that come with making mistakes and learning to let them go.
Review
This one is really sweet. The artwork is such a lovely watercolor, where you can really tell the talent of the artist, and yet it still has that thing I talked about the other day with it being very welcoming to kids in its drawing style by feeling very kid-like. But the watercolor details just make my heart happy. And that’s not the only thing. I love the message of this story. I think it’s really important for kids. I’m going to come at this from an art perspective, but I find that when Madeline makes a mistake when she draws, she can sometimes go full drama about it and just thinks that her art career has ended. I try to explain to her that a mistake is an opportunity to try a new direction, but it’s hard to help her with her actual feelings. I think this books illustrates the feelings she goes through and a way to process them and move on from them in a different way than I’ve been able to explain to her.
