Review

WL Rating

I do like it when I get a shipment of new surf books for kids. Aside from the much quicker reading time, the books are always light and manage to capture the simple, pure spirit of surfing better than most of the highly produced books I read. Dude, Fun with Dude and Betty riffs off of the old Dick and Jane learning-to-read books, but with a quirky bit of surf and sand tossed in for good measure. Similar to other good young surfer books like Rhinos Who Surf, Dude doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Surf “sounding” words like “Stokeaboa” literally come out of nowhere, but are funny so long as you’re not an uptight neo-bohemian surfer. It’s clear that the author had fun with the book, particularly when she describes Betty as “A righteous surf bunny. She does not live in the Valley.” Coming from LA, I actually laughed out loud when I read that, and nodded in appreciation. Because there are some tougher words like bodacious as well as quite a bit of mangled grammar, this probably isn’t a great book for training early readers, but it’s definitely a good selection to read to a young child, particularly if you want that young child to surf someday. I’d say this is a good one to read to kids aged 2-6, but kids up to 10 will enjoy it too. (October 2011)

Dude - Lisa Pliscou

Details

Category: Fiction

Reading Style: Easy

Pages: 40

Pub Date: 2011

Tags: Surfing