Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Mimi May ILLUSTRATOR: Aniek Bartels GENRE: Children's Nonfiction Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: June 23, 2026 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A picture book depicting one adventurous day in the life of a slug. Nonfiction that reads like fiction. Informative and funny. Needed a bit of tweaking in some textual portions. Some content might be tough to explain to the target age group. Could work for slightly older children who are interested in animals. Parents advised to read it first. This informative picture book begins by introducing us to Simon the Slug and with a labelled diagram explaining his anatomical features – very useful. I like how there’s a pronunciation key for the tough body parts. The main content covers one day in the life of Simon. Luckily (or unluckily) for us, Simon is having one heck of a day where he eats a lot, narrowly escapes being eaten, almost loses his head, meets another lovely slug to mate, nearly dries out, and so on, all within the timeframe of...

AUTHOR: Dawn McMillan ILLUSTRATOR: Ross Kinnaird GENRE: Children's Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: September 1, 2012 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A children’s picture book with some questionable inclusions. My low rating isn't because this talks about butts, but because I found it poorly written. Plot Preview: Written in first person, the young narrator is sad at having discovered a crack in his butt. He wonders where and when he might have broken it. (He’s fairly certain a fart caused it to split.) He then mulls over various butt options he could try as a replacement, going from the arty to the outrageous. But will these options work on a broken bottom? It is a truth universally acknowledged that kids like good butt stories. And this one seemed to have the makings of one. But I don’t get its appeal. Honestly, the title got me cracking up. I was hoping for a cheeky story about how the boy discovers that all butts are cracked. However, while the story started off excellently, ...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Clarice Tudor GENRE: Satire PUBLICATION DATE: May 5, 2026 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: A humorous book about contemporary dating misadventures but worded and illustrated in medieval English style. Funny in content and illustrations, though the humour is also a painful reminder of the travails of dating (men in particular.) Recommended to readers with a funny bone and a frustrated love life. One look at that title, cover art, and blurb was enough to make me grab this book. I am long past my dating days, but no woman can resist a chance to empathise with other women’s dating mishaps. Reading this book is like a virtual gossipy session with a fellow woman, bitching about the male specimen of our species. While there might be many books with dating misadventures, what sets this one apart is the medieval style. The tagline calls this “A Modern Medieval Guide to Bad Dates and Worse Decisions”, and the content sticks to this agenda. The author says the content was...

AUTHOR: Katarína Macurová GENRE: Children's Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: July 16, 2019 RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A picture book about one animal trying to help his friend to fly. Probably among the funniest picture books I have read! Love the story, the message, the ending, and the illustrations. A couple of the jokes might be understood better by adults, but plenty of learning opportunities here. Recommended. Plot Preview: Arthur the bear is concerned that his friend Eddie, a “bird”, doesn’t ever fly but walks everywhere. When he asks Eddie about it, Eddie responds that no one taught him how to fly. So Arthur decides that he will teach his friend to fly. Thus begins a series of lectures and practical sessions on flying from the bear to the “bird”. But as adult readers can guess, teaching this “bird” to fly ain’t gonna be an easy task! After a long series of debacles, Arthur decides to ask other birds for help. Do you think Arthur will succeed? Don’t you just love it whe...

AUTHOR: Abby Cooper ILLUSTRATOR: Eliana Gutiérrez GENRE: Humour PUBLICATION DATE: March 10, 2026 RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A clever satirical picture book speaking to babies and toddlers about how to take care of their new moms. 😉 Absolutely loved the concept and the implementation. The satire is excellent, as is the strong tone of empathy. Much recommended to all moms-to-be and new moms. The title was enough to get me to grab this book. With the twist on the usual “It’s a Boy/Girl”, “It’s a Mom” made me curious to see the content. Turns out, it is a care package for new mommies wrapped in a lot of satire. What fun! I enjoyed the concept as well as the execution. The text is directed at kiddos aged 2 to 5 ( wink, wink! ) and is a guide on how to take care of their new moms ( more exuberant winking! ). Thus it offers advice about essentials such how to help moms stay awake at night, how to ensure that moms have a wash during your bath time, how to allow her tummy time, and so ...

AUTHOR: Lauren Haldeman GENRE: Comics Collection PUBLICATION DATE: March 10, 2026 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A “diary comic” collection by the poet-artist. Covers random musings, confessions, and funny moments from routine life. Hazy in its purpose and disjointed in execution, hence leading to a lacklustre reading experience. I had expected far better from the blurb. The blurb tells us that the author is an award-winning poet and that this book offers “a fresh, humorous, and emotionally resonant perspective on the wonders and weirdness of everyday life.” This tempted me to give this book a try. I mean, we do see plenty of the weirdness on display in real life these days, but it would have been great to look at the wonders as well. Sadly, the book doesn’t exactly do justice to this claim. The blurb also calls this a ‘debut book from an exciting new voice in comics’, but this also is inaccurate. The author already has a couple of published graphic novels to her name. (Unless the blu...

AUTHOR: Veronika Dapunt GENRE: Dark Comedy-Mystery. PUBLICATION DATE: January 6, 2026 RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A speculative, darkly comic mystery with Death as the narrator. Funny at the start, mysterious in between, somewhat deeper and philosophical towards the end. Creative throughout. Enjoyed the characters, the humour and the flow. Unexpected religious angle, but it was highly interesting. Didn’t like one particular aspect of the plotting, but otherwise, this offered an entertaining ride, as long as you read it in the right spirit of going with the flow without asking too many questions. An excellent debut that overly conservative Christians better avoid. Plot Preview: Death is tired of humans picturing her as a skeleton with a black ‘potato sack’ and a scythe. No matter how well she does her job, she still doesn’t get welcomed with joy or treated with respect. So when she learns from a newly departed soul that there’s something called a work sabbatical, Death immediatel...

AUTHOR: Thomas Nowak ILLUSTRATOR: Alberto Miranda GENRE: Humour PUBLICATION DATE: March 3, 2026 RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A collection of Dad jokes. Mix of puns, riddles, and smart one-liners. Some jokes were familiar to me, but many were new. Some were a bit too esoteric, especially for children. If you love Dad jokes, you'll find some great ones in this book. Better suited to adults. My younger daughter is fond of dad jokes, and we have a gala time at home cracking each other up with our quips. As such, when I saw this book listed on NetGalley, I immediately asked her if she wanted me to get it and read it together. There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation before her ‘Yes!’ rang out. We ended up having a lot of fun with this buddy read, but also wished some things were different. The book starts with a humorous dedication – the perfect start to a joke collection. It then moves on to the jokes, with the table of contents indicating the ten topic areas the jokes are distribu...

AUTHOR:  Lisa Fox GENRE: Satirical Story Collection PUBLICATION DATE: 7th December 2025 RATING: 3.6 stars. In a Nutshell: A short story collection that takes a satirical look at several relevant topics. Varied in genres and protagonists. The humour is somewhat dark. Entertaining enough, as long as you expect the OTT tone common to satire.  Author Lisa Fox has penned two short story collections prior to this one: ‘Core Truths’   and ‘Passageways’ . I had enjoyed both of these speculative collections and hence looked forward to her latest set of stories. This one is slightly different from the earlier two, in that it doesn’t contain a unifying theme.  The stories in both “Core Truths” and “Passageways” were embodiments of their respective titles, with every story containing a “core truth”/“passageway” as applicable. I think that helped me appreciate the author’s cleverness and creativity better. This time, there was no thread connecting the stories beyond the sati...

AUTHOR: Tom Gauld GENRE: Cartoon Collection. PUBLICATION DATE: April 2, 2020 RATING: 4 stars. A set of cartoons for science nerds. All of these originally appeared in New Scientist magazine, so obviously, the STEM level is quite high. A few of these are a bit too abstract, but many of these are genuinely hilarious. Most depict a high level of scientific understanding, so it would help if the reader also has a basic scientific knowledge, else the joke would be lost in the ether. Much recommended to science enthusiasts with a sense of humour. Better if read at random than in one go.

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Pénélope Bagieu TRANSLATOR: Montana Kane GENRE: Graphic Memoir PUBLICATION DATE: October 17, 2023 RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A graphic memoir, but not of the kind you typically see. Loved this eclectic collection of anecdotes from the author’s life, covering sweet and bittersweet memories. The writing and the artwork both are great. Definitely recommended. Somehow, there have been too many graphic memoirs coming my way in the last few weeks. Most of them hadn’t gone too well, so I had decided to take a break from nonfiction graphic works. When I picked this book up, I didn’t realise it was again a memoir, having totally missed that tiny tagline under the title. I just saw the adorable cover art and grabbed it. But this book has been a delight in various ways. This graphic comic was originally published in French under the title ‘Les Strates’ in 2021. This English translation was released in 2023. Had I not read this on the inside page, I would never hav...

AUTHOR: Collins Kids GENRE: Nonfiction, Trivia PUBLICATION DATE: September 11, 2025. RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: As the title indicates, a collection of “curious facts” on a multitude of topics. Great for trivia lovers. The title tell you that the book contains “Curious Facts About Everything”. The tagline informs you that this book contains 1500 interesting facts to amaze you. The GR page indicates that the book is just 160 pages long. All this together tells you one key feature of the book: it’s a bit crowded. The book does contain 1500 facts. ( They are numbered, so we don’t need to actually count them to verify the claim. ) However, as the thin size of the book indicates, the facts are in a numbered list. Each page contains anywhere between 6 to 15 pieces of trivia. I am not sure if all the entries can be called “curious” in the sense of “strange” or “unusual”, but the compilation is interesting and meticulous. The content is listed topic-wise, taken from seventy-six points...

AUTHOR: Hannah Shaw GENRE: Language PUBLICATION DATE: July 1, 2025 RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A compilation of feline idioms and proverbs from various languages. Informative and entertaining. Cute illustrations as well. A good gift option for cat lovers and word lovers. English has plenty of feline phrases, ranging from ‘Who will bell the cat?’ to ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ to the titular ‘Cat got your tongue?’ This book helps us realise how ubiquitous the presence of cats is even in other languages. Popularly known as “Kitten Lady”, the author is an animal advocate, kitten rescuer, and professional cat photographer. ( She has also penned the lovely-sounding “Cats of the World”, which my library fortunately has. I am adding it to my immediate reading list. ) This hardcover edition contains sixty cat-related phrases, gathered by her during her travels across thirty countries. This book begins with a brilliant introductory note by the author that sets the right tone for the ma...

AUTHOR: Coco Cooper GENRE: Contemporary Fiction, Satire PUBLICATION DATE: June 13, 2025. RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A contemporary satirical fiction about a character with an identity crisis. Mostly quirky, fairly funny, somewhat reflective, a little distressing. Goes overboard in the final quarter. As long as you go with the flow and are prepared for some disturbing events, this book can be entertaining. Plot Preview: Teddington Miles aka Teddy lives a happy life with Millie. As she works from home, they spend many happy hours enjoying each other’s company. The only thorn in Teddy’s existence is Charlie, the unwelcome visitor who always turns Millie’s attention away from Teddy. When Millie suddenly vanishes one day, Teddy is sure that Charlie is the guilty party. He begins a secret investigation with the help of some trusted companions, but the truths that come out aren’t what Teddy expected. The story comes to us in Teddy’s first-person perspective, with some epistolary interl...

EDITORS: Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley GENRE: Anthology PUBLICATION DATE: June 3, 2025 RATING: No rating. In a Nutshell: A anthology of “gay crime” stories. The queer content was decent but the crime content left me somewhat dissatisfied. Also, the R-rated content and language in many stories wasn’t to my reading taste. So this collection wasn’t my cup of tea, though I did find a few gems herein. The moment I saw that amazing punny title, I knew that I would have to get my hands on this collection. Seeing gay + crime within the same title stoked all embers of my curiosity. The fact that the book was included in the GR Reading challenge for Pride reads was the icing on the cake. However, the expectations created by the title were met only to some extent. This anthology has sixteen stories, each of which feature an LGBTQIA+ character and a crime. Sounds like a fun combo, right? But it doesn’t exactly work that way. Thanks to the contributing authors coming from varied backgrounds...