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Your Kids Will Savor Laurie Parker's
The Turtle Saver
By Kendeyl Johansen
Who knows what might happen when we do a good deed just to be nice? In Laurie Parker's latest book, The Turtle Saver (Quail Ridge Press), a little kindness matters a lot. When a man saves a turtle from the middle of the street, it sets off an imaginative chain of events that ends up saving his life.
My 5-year-old son, Max, loved the circular way the story unfolds, clearly enjoying that the man saved the turtle, and the turtle saved the man. The story is full of Southern flavor, conjuring the images and language of Parker's native Mississippi. We meet a sleepy bullfrog, dragonflies, birds feasting on cornbread and boys roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over a campfire.
The story is told in a clear Southern voice where the "turtle sat a spell," and the "big ol' dragonfly" zipped along. I like how Parker "talks" to the reader asking, "What do you think?" She also chooses her characters well – we empathize with the proud grandpa eager to get to his grandson's Little League tournament but willing to stop for an endangered turtle and the sad widow missing her husband.
Parker's illustrations are eye-catching and interesting. The pictures are filled with whimsical details that call to children, like a squirrel walking along a picket fence and a gigantic sunflower growing through a crack in the cement of a dilapidated service station.
I did find some of the book's language too advanced. My son asked several questions about words like "transpire," "perused" and "pharmacist." And my 13-year-old babysitter, Laurel Willoughby of Park City, Utah, agreed that some of the vocabulary was difficult, even for someone her age. But that didn't keep her from giving the book high marks. "The Turtle Saver was a really, really cute book, and I liked the moral," she says.
Max and I definitely agree.