Denny and Penny - Silas Wood

AUTHOR: Silas Wood

GENRE: Children's Picture Book

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Seemed promising but was just okay.

Denny and Penny are two little foxes. (Friends? Siblings?) One day, Denny runs out of food and runs to Penny for a bite. She seems to have only healthy dishes in her pantry, while Denny is desperate for junk food. Having no choice, he still wolfs down what she offers, loves it, but doesn’t tell her this so as to prove her claim wrong that healthy food can be tasty too. When she gets offended at his blatant lie, she sends him away but he later returns, “head hung low”. She forgives him and they share dessert together.

As you can see, quite a lot happens in this little picture book. This is even more surprising if you keep in mind that there is just one single line of text on every page. The intention is good: eat healthy, don’t tell lies, forgive your friends,… But I am not too happy about the method in which these ideas were put ahead.

1. There was no apology. Denny is a brat, to put it mildly, but Penny just accept his supposed regret after he stands in front of her with a hang-dog expression.

2. The target age seems to be quite basic, considering the layout and minimal text. Then why are accented dishes such as ‘Crème soufflé’ or ‘Creamy Pomme Purée’ mentioned? There are so many other healthy foods with easy-to-pronounce names. There are also a couple of other tough words such as ‘reprieve’ and ‘repent’.

3. Personal preference: I’m not fond of name-calling in picture books. Penny calls Denny a ‘rascal’ and a ‘rat’.

4. The text is written in simple rhyming prose, some of which work well, some don’t. A couple of typos have popped in the digital edition.

The illustrations appeared cute at first, but soon I realised that they were somewhat basic, with variants of the same expression being used on multiple pages. This might not be so evident in the physical book but in the digital edition, it was as if just the text changed but most of the illustrations stayed the same. Even a difference in the background colour would have added a little tinge of freshness.

I realise that this is an indie work, but it has far too many issues for me to give it a higher rating. 

I downloaded a complimentary copy of this book through a ‘StoryOrigin’ promo and these are my honest thoughts about it.