Elphie Meets the End of The World

Elphie Meets the End of The World

About the Book:

Title: Elphie Meets the End of The World | Author: Hagit R. Oron | Illustrator: Or Oron | Genre: Picture Book | Pages: 17

Book Description:

The end of the world is coming. Today. They said so on TV!

When Elphie overhears an older boy talking about the end of the world, he runs home to find a better place to hide. Luckily, Mom and Dad are there and the three of them manage to deal with the dreadful news.

Elphie books is a series of funny and sweet stories featuring a timid young elephant named Elphie. Each story is a different exciting adventure inspired by the daily life of young children. The books address kids and adult alike, and can be read without a specific order.

A free parent's guide with every purchase.

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My Review:

Elphie Meets the End of The World is a tender story about a young elephant named Elphie who hears some scary news and how this affects him. Elphie’s parents realize that he’s scared and try to alleviate his fears by speaking truthfully and putting his thoughts and energy on creating a party instead. There’s an interesting little “fake news” speech bubble toward the end that would make for a good discussion topic for parents and their children. The authors also provide a free resource if you sign up with your first name and email address.

Related Reviews:

Elphie and Dad Go On an Epic Adventure

by Hagit R. and Or Oron

Bravo and Elphie

by Hagit R. and Or Oron

Elphie Goes Trick or Treating

by Hagit R. and Or Oron

Bear with Bear
by Hagit R. Oron

About the Mother-Daughter Team:

Hagit R. and Or Oron

Hagit R. and Or Oron are a mother and daughter who love to create, imagine, laugh and have fun together. Their mission is to bring joy and happiness to kids and parents all around the world. How? One picture book at a time.

More About the Author:

Hagit R. Oron, an award winning author, became an avid reader the minute she learned to read.

During her teens, she worked as a librarian in a public library just to be close to books, where she soon found out that she has book-matchmaking skills, that is connecting the right book to the right reader.

Surrounded by all those great titles inspired her to start writing. She daydreamed her first stories while commuting to the library.

Everything changed when she discovered computer programming and realized that she’s an excellent coder. So, for many years, she wrote tens of thousands of code lines. Most of them began with an if.

But fiction was bubbling inside her and after two decades of coding, it suddenly erupted in the form of picture books. She had to give in.

Now she devotes her days to writing adorable stories for kids. She utilizes her coding experience to bury little Easter eggs in her books, by telling parts of the story with illustrations and by hiding messages aimed at the adult reader inside the text.

It’s her book matchmaking skills that make her stories appeal to a broad audience.

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Mother's Love and $25 #Giveaway

Mother's Love Can Conquer Any Fear
Book Review Blitz and

Book Blast with $25 Giveaway

About the Book

Title: Mother's Love Can Conquer Any Fear! | Author: Subhash Kommuru | Illustrator: Sujata Kommuru | Publication Date: October, 2014 | Publisher: Kommuru Books | Pages: 32 | Recommended Ages: 3 to 8

Book Description: Shastriji is a wise old chicken who always has an answer for How.... until comes the vile crow Kaalia who is up to no good. All of Shastriji's ideas to deal with Kaalia one after other backfires. What if the right question was not "How" but “Why”? Could there be an end to the tyranny of Kaalia?

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Sneak Peek

My Review

Amanda enjoyed this story very much. She thought the illustrations were beautifully drawn and she laughed at the ending. Her favorite chicken was Ganga.

What I liked about the book: I also thought the ending was very funny. I was expecting the fear to be the child's (in this case, the chick's), but the fear was the mother's and she overcame it with love for her chick. You will have to read the story to find out what happened! The story was entertaining and I would recommend it to children ages 4 to 8.

What I didn't like about the book: There was a wise old male chicken named Shastriji, but chickens are females and roosters are males. And, two adult females were called chicks when they should have been called chickens. These details didn't seem to be important to Amanda, but she is at the age when kids are supposed to be learning these things. 

About the Author & Illustrator:
Subhash & Sujata Kommuru

Subhash and Sujata Kommuru hail from India. They migrated to the United States along with their memories of childhood and youth. Now that they are parents, just like every immigrant they crave to introduce their child to the culture and values of their upbringing. Yet it is challenging to teach something while you are in the midst of adjusting to a different culture yourself.

Subhash and Sujata both work in different disciplines and have different styles and backgrounds, but it is the upbringing of their son that brings them on the same page. That exact place where they meet is captured and reflected in their stories, where Subhash can express in words, and Sujata can illustrate them beautifully. Where he puts it in black and white, she adds color to it. You get the idea!

These stories are their attempt to share a glimpse of their childhood days with their son. He is their inspiration to write short stories that have meaning to them and provide teaching in some shape or form.

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$25 Book Blast Giveaway

Prize: One winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card or PayPal cash (winner's choice)

Contest closes: November 30, 11:59 pm, 2014

Open to: Internationally

How to enter: Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget below.

Terms and Conditions: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. A winner will be randomly drawn through the Rafflecopter widget and will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends. The winner will then have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new draw will take place for a new winner. Odds of winning will vary depending on the number of eligible entries received. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. This giveaway is sponsored by Kommuru Books and is hosted and managed by Renee from Mother Daughter Book Reviews. If you have any additional questions – feel free to send and email to Renee(at)MotherDaughterBookReviews(dot)com.

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Disclosure: I received a free digital copy of this book for my honest review.

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Some Things Just Take Time

Purple Play-Dough in Her Hair (18 months old)

My previous post was about how parents can help children overcome their fears. I mentioned that using games was a key in helping Amanda overcome her fear of shadows. Today’s post is about a fear that Amanda had that took her two years to finally outgrow. That was the fear of getting water on her head or in her eyes. It started with her very first head-to-toe bath.

Amanda was not my first child. I was very used to the routine of checking the temperature of the bath water. I was also used to the task of supporting the baby’s head with one hand while washing it with the other. Despite all my best efforts, she would scream and carry on as if she was being mishandled. Sometimes the other members of my family wanted to know what I was doing to her.

Bath-Time (about 1 month old)

I would try to calm her fears by singing to her or making a game out of bath-time, but nothing worked. By the way, I didn’t wash her hair every time she took a bath. I only washed her hair whenever it was necessary. As soon as she was old enough to hold a facecloth over her eyes, I let her do that to try and help her feel more in control of the situation.

I still remember the first time she didn’t cry. She was two years old. She and I both verbally celebrated her achievement. After that, she began to out-grow her fear and the crying happened less and less often.

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How to Handle Fear

When Amanda was younger, she used to be fearful of shadows. It’s easy as an adult to logically understand what causes shadows and to know that they cannot hurt you, but you cannot dispel the fear in a child’s mind using logic alone.

I used Amanda’s bedtime to play shadow games with her. I would put on the light and we would cast shadows against the wall with our hands. If trees cast shadows on the window, I’d pick her up, open the window and point out the trees. Also, whenever we took a walk and saw our own shadows, I would encourage Amanda to jump on mine and then I’d pretend, in a joking way, to get hurt. She would laugh and play along. The more she saw that shadows were a natural and normal occurrence, the less she became fearful of them.

The other night, Amanda and I took Benny, our dog, for a walk. It was already dark outside and the street lights were on. She wasn’t afraid, not even once. She even asked to play the jump-on-my-shadow game.

Being fearful is not only a childhood problem. Many adults are controlled by their fears. The Bible states that perfect love casts out fear (1John 4:18). One would have thought faith was the answer to fear, but it is love. It's a good topic to think about and an important one. We should ask ourselves throughout the day whether we are living out of fear or out of love. We can swap very quickly from one to the other. Let love rule and not fear.

The above photo was taken yesterday at my son's high school rugby game. It was the perfect morning for Amanda to play a jump-on-my-shadow game on the sidelines.

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