Feed Me Books- The Flightless Goose by Eric D. Goodman

What I Can Tell You:

The pictures are incredible. My kids were excited to have me read the book to them. We love sitting down with a new book. 

I was reading the book out loud and came to the part where Gilbert is hit by a car. We see Geese cross to the lake everyday and the kids were surprised that a car wouldn't have stopped for Gilbert. The pictures of Gilbert all bandaged up afterward brought on a lot of questions. Like "what happened to him, did he break something? how come that car didn't stop, thank God he didn't get swashed."  When I tried to move to the next page they stopped me and wanted to see the car hitting him again. Odd, but I guess they are just curious. 

They felt bad when Gilbert was told he wouldn't fly again and when the other geese left him to fly South. They worried about Gilbert facing the winter alone. They were disturbed by the "creepy strangers" who came to grab the geese and throw them in a sack after talking about how plumb they were. They asked about Gilbert's friend Johnny who is in a wheelchair and were excited when Gilbert and Johnny were able to save the geese. 

The moral of the story is you can overcome any challenge and just because you are different doesn't mean that there isn't something you are good at and you are as good as anyone else. In the end Gilbert is a hero and even though he could not fly, he could run and that "made him really great!"

My son loves reading along and this book came with a CD. The narrator and the sound effects do a great job telling the story without scaring younger kids.