Lola Dutch is witty, artistic fun that makes up a great good-night book

At some point in their day most kids who are between six and eight years old are like Lola Dutch. She’s a hyper creative girl who likes to paint, cook and hangs out with her four friends a bear, alligator, pig and crane.  Everything she does is in excess. When she goes to the library she checks out so many books that bear has to help push them in her wagon. When she paints it’s a myriad of styles that the masters have done through the ages. It’s so much even that bear has to say, “Lola Dutch, you are just too much”.

Lola Dutch is not a rhyming book. It’s important to say that because older kids might think that rhyming books are for young children-and they’re much too old to read a book that rhymes. Lola Dutch is a great good-night, children’s book that stands out from the crowd for many reasons.

The first thing I noticed about Lola Dutch is its scope, warmth and colors. It has the heart that you love about Paddington. Even if you’ve never read or seen Paddington, the concept of a friendly, innocent bear who would do anything for a marmalade sandwich makes you grin. They’re similar to the adventures that Lola Dutch has; they’re on a grand scale and full of detail, but readers never think that she’s doing anything malicious or out of control.

On this day Lola is not sure what to do, but true to her nature, everything that she does is over the top. In the kitchen the crane is making crepes, the pig is making pastries and the gator is cooking grits. When they all settle down to eat it’s a massive spread of food that creates an amazing amount of dishes which leads bear to say again, “Lola Dutch, you are just too much”.

Lola Dutch manages to be more than the sum of its parts. You’ve got the creative girl, lots of animals, crazy adventures and more; yet even with all of that the book seems to be bigger-and more entertaining, than readers expect it to be. The art was created using pencil and watercolor and really feels loved. There are several soft (and some overt) instances where Lola and her friends pay homage to

As with any great, good-night book it also teaches a lesson. But it does so in a soft, barely there way of teaching that kids might not realize that they’re learning something. In this case the lesson is that it’s fun to be creative and goofy, but that there’s also a time to decompress and enjoy things on a more sedate level.

Lola Dutch will appeal to girls more than boys, but boys won’t mind having it read to them. Do you know what I mean? Girls will actively seek out the book before boys, but boys who simply have it read to them won’t argue at all; in fact they’ll enjoy it and ask for the book again.