Leo the Lightning Bug

by Eric Drachman, James Muscarello (Illustrator)

Overview

Leo wins our hearts and gains self-confidence in his struggle to make his very own light.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780970380906
Publisher:	Kidwick Books
Publication date:	11/18/2005
Edition description:	Book and Audio CD
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	12.11(w) x 9.18(h) x 0.34(d)
Lexile:	AD580L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

Editorial Reviews

What could be worse than being a lightning bug that cannot light? For young Leo, who is smaller than all his friends and laughed at for all his efforts, the humiliation is overwhelming. The sanctuary of a lightless cave "for a lightless lightning bug" is the perfect place for Leo to vent his feelings and to contemplate a solution. Pleasure abounds in this production. At the start, the listener is invited to cozy up for a bedtime story. Drachman's young nephew is a fabulous Leo and melts hearts with his dejection, earnest efforts to light his light, and soaring confidence. Cricket melodies, rain, and the lightning strike will have listeners checking out the window. Children and adults combine to make this a child-friendly presentation. A.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 04 - AudioFile

The author’s degrees in pyschology and acting have helped him write a story that children will relate to.

ForeWord Magazine

Everyone wins in this comfortably conventional tale of a lightless young glowworm who finally gets the hang of lighting up. As friends look on laughing, little Leo grunts and squeezes-his problem not constipation, but the inability to strike a light. After retreating into a cave for a good cry, Leo remembers his mother's advice to keep practicing, and barrels out into an inspirational lightning storm. Muscarello depicts Leo and associates as chubby, neon-purple apostrophes wearing bits of clothing and bearing broad, Disneyesque facial features. Leo ultimately learns not only how to glow, but how to laugh along with his friends too; so, unlike Eric Carle's Very Lonely Firefly (1995), this is not about sex but self-esteem. Drachman tends to overwrite ("Like all people and bugs and fish and animals of every kind, Leo did not like to be laughed at"), but his fable makes an engaging companion for Robert Kraus's developmental tales, or Bernard Waber's classic about a bug with a related but opposite problem, A Firefly Named Torchy (1970). Packaged with a lively, multi-voiced dramatic reading on CD. (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews