Baby Monkey trying to put on his pants had my three-year-old busting a gut. She was cracking up so hard we had to stop so she could catch her breath. That's a five star book any day of the week.

This a hybrid between a traditional early reader (very few words per page, big font size, lots of repetition, illustrations are clues to the text) and a chapter book (around 200 pages, five chapters, has a more "I'm a big kid now" look to it). Even though it's a lot of pages, it's best read in one sitting because the joke builds to a crescendo and ends sweetly.

This book is near perfect. The only quibble I have is: why is the mom dressed in a 19th century bonnet and shawl? Baby monkey's pants are jeans and there's a SPACESHIP and an astronaut in one chapter so it's really puzzling to me that mom is dressed like Little Bo Peep. I know her face is meant to be hidden in the first picture of her, but there could have been other ways to accomplish that. ( )

Golden Sower nominee #2 for me this spring...Super cute story, and so many "Easter Eggs" in the drawings. Read on a Kindle, so I'm not sure if I missed any of the art (the TOC said it was 191 pages, but it did not take long to read it), so I definitely want to check out a hard copy. But even the Kindle version was worth it. ( )

Charming, adorable, informative, and playful. This books makes me wish my children were younger so I could buy it for them as a gift. ( )

This is kind of random, but the book before my last one also had Monkey in the title, and I liked it even less than this. Perhaps there's an embedded message?

Cute illustrations, as always in a Brian Selznick book, but this one did not work for me. Great premise: a baby monkey private detective. But, much of his cleverness is not shared with readers. Five clients come to his office to help find something stolen, and he solves the crimes one by one. But, we don't know how. Kind of disappointing actually since solving the mystery is what's fun about them. I also got really tired of the monkey's struggling to put on his pants. I liked the last two pages in which the office furnishings are identified for each mystery, but for my money, I'm sticking with the classic: Curious George. He's more colorful too. ( )

children's beginning reader, heavy on the pictures.
OMG, this was too cute, and an enjoyable story for any beginning reader to tackle. I hope there is more coming. ( )