Disclosure: Life as Leels received a copy of this book in exchange for my review.
Book Title:
The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey
Author:
Liana-Melissa Allen
Genre:
Children
Pages:
36
Content Rating:
G
Life as Leels’ Rating:
5 out of 5
Buy the Book:
(ALSO AVAILABLE IN SPANISH, “los tres caballitos y el burro bravo”)
“The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey” is a tale (based on the “Three Little Pigs”), about three little horse brothers who suddenly lose their house that is destroyed by a fire. The young horses are totally alone and thrust into the reality of having to depend on themselves and each other against a bully donkey, who wanders the forest, wrecking homes and bullying the other animals. This warm-hearted tale promotes strong values and has a fun premise. Written and humorously illustrated in vivid color throughout by Liana-Melissa Allen, the story is a proven winner for reading aloud to children.
Hear the book!
The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey was a cute read that children of all ages will enjoy and love!
The book is clearly based on the Three Little Pigs story with horses and a donkey rather than pigs and a big bad wolf.
I feel that The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey is less ‘scary’ as there is no big bad wolf, just a not so nice donkey. Additionally, the ending in The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey is more positive.
I felt that the story itself lent a few good lessons that enable us to teach our children important lessons.
1. The horses run into their house that is on fire to grab their belongings.
This brings up a teachable moment of teaching children fire safety and how we don’t go back into a fire. We can replace our material things, but we can’t replaced our children.
2. That a little hard work is a positive.
Just as the pigs, the first two horses are lazy and take the easy way out building a house of bushes with thorns and a house of pointy sticks. Not only do they get destroyed, the horses get hurt in the process because they didn’t take the time to do it right the first time.
The ending took on a wonderful spin of the donkey moving in with the horses and all of them being friends living under one roof.
The illustrations were beautifully done and the story was fun to read.
I would say that this is a book that maybe third grade and up could read on their own – there are some big words, but it is a book that anyone could read to a child of any age and they would certainly enjoy it!
About the Author
Liana-Melissa Allen is a young author and illustrator of children’s books and books for youth. She has written, illustrated and published six books. Her most recent one is the colorfully illustrated children’s book “Donkey’s Kite”, the second book of “A Horse Valley Adventure” series. The first was “The Three Little Horses and the Big Bully Donkey”. The lovable cartoon characters, Max, Lax, Jack and Donkey makes them a favorite of first and second grade students. She is now working on her third book of “A Horse Valley Adventure”.
The magical world of fantasy has inspired Liana’s imagination since as long as she can remember. Part of this was fueled by her dad reading aloud to her every day when she was younger. As a result, reading is her primary passion along with music. These two passions feed her imagination into stories and drawings, which she joyously sketches out into storyboards for a potential book.
Liana-Melissa is also a dedicated classical/jazz pianist, and mostly enjoys older music, especially from the big band era and the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. While playing the piano, her imagination often leads to a great amount of improvising. Frequently, Liana will improvise a theme for one of the stories she is writing. Capturing this improvised music became a priority, which ultimately resulted in theme music for “A Horse Valley Adventure”. The “Horse Valley” theme will be used for a short animated video featuring her Horse Valley characters.
Liana-Melissa loves to hear from her young readers. Please visit her website at
for more information, and to contact her by email. Visit her on
too.
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