Operation Bumpkin Birthday by Petrina Khashoggi

The Synopsis:

It’s not easy being a rat. Three brothers, Snitch, Snatch, and Sketch, are tired of scavenging for scraps of food down in the subway where they live. One night, they go on an adventure through the city so that they will never go hungry again. After arriving at a large house, they discover that the next day, a children’s birthday party is planned for young Horatio Bumpkin. The brothers hatch a clever plot to break into the house during the festivities and steal as much food as possible-without getting caught. But one greedy brother spoils the plan with a plan of his own…

I received this book from the author/publisher for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

Review:

Operation Bumpkin Birthday is a cute little book that has beautiful illustrations!

The pictures are crisp and defined, sure to capture the attention of any young child who enjoys looking at pictures. The story was well written and engaging and I loved all of the rats’ names!

The moral of the story, however, was portrayed kind of shakily. I understood the moral, which I assume to be “do not be greedy”, but it was interesting how the author showed this. It wasn’t necessarily in a bad way, but I do think the author could have re-worded the end in some way, to not make the two other brothers seem so mean. Although, the way she ended it, did show that there are consequences to being greedy. So on that thought the end was done well 🙂

There is one thing that parents may not like in this book for ages 2-4. One of the rats’ tail gets cut off and though there is no blood, there is a picture with a giant knife slicing off the tail of the rat and then there are a couple of pictures with the tailless rat. This personally did not bother me, but I know that many parents may find this disturbing so I figured that I would mention it.

All in all a great little book that I rate 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for it’s pictures especially!