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Mar 28, 2015mmcbeth29 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Peyton and Penny, twin siblings, are having a birthday. Their parents take them to The Perfect Pet Emporium for a party with their friends. There they see all sorts of different kinds of animals. Each child there is paired with a perfect pet according to his or her love language. The illustrations appear to be digitally rendered and are very detailed and colorful. I love Gary Chapman's concept of the five love languages and I was excited about reading this book because I wanted to see if this book could be used to teach the love languages to very little children. But after two or three pages I had to put it down. It took me three sessions of reading to finish. I was completely overwhelmed. Not only are there lengthy paragraphs with some words highlighted in color, but there are also page activities. You are encouraged to look for insects on every single page of the book. There are also seek activities such as: can you find these six animals on this page? I had to stop after reading each paragraph to look for the items and by then I had lost my train of thought. I did not understand why certain words were highlighted while others were not. There was no glossary in the back. There is a questionnaire at the end to help you determine your child's love language, but there is no parent guide on how to use the book for the most benefit. If I were reading this story for the first time to a child, I would leave out all of the seek and find activities and just read the story. This story may need more than one sitting because of its length (62 pages). Then read it a second time using the seek activities. I was a bit disappointed that the author or publisher felt this book needed all of the bells and whistles when a good story with fun illustrations would have been enough. This book is recommended for ages 3-7, but the younger children will not be able to get through this story in one sitting. Perhaps it would be best as a to-be-continued bedtime story. 5 stars for story idea, 3 stars for poor formatting and not considering how this book could be overwhelming for target age group.