"Welcome to Arugula’s tea party! Everything’s going to be just perfect, because that’s exactly how she likes things. The problem: perfection is no fun for her guests—they’re too nervous to touch or eat anything. And when someone unexpected arrives, ready to get her party started, Arugula’s horrified. Especially when everyone seems to like him better than her…"

This is our second book from Sterling Publishing. Sarah and Max are totally enjoying their new job as book reviewers!

It took a moment to get into the flow of this book with the kids. This has nothing at all to do with the content of the book, but I realized as soon as we started reading that my kids had never read a comic book.

*gasp*

I KNOW...and I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s. Who’da thunk it?!

Once I taught them how to follow along the comic-book style boxes, we were well on our way into a very cute story. Poor, poor Arugula. I could totally relate to her desire for perfection...as could Sarah. We are both type A personalities. Max, on the other hand, is more like the character named Fidget. He doesn’t worry about things being JUST SO and tends to be the life of the party.

This offered us a valuable opportunity to discuss different personalities. The story teaches that it is OK to stop trying to control everything. In a house of control freaks, this is a welcome message. Hopefully Sarah will learn earlier than I did that it is OK to let go sometimes.

On a Mommycosm scale of 1 to 10, we give this book a solid 8.

Here’s the book information:

Title: Perfectly Arugula
Author: Sarah Dillard
(Illustrator: Sarah Dillard)
Publisher: Sterling
Published: February 2009
Age range: 3 and up
Length: 32 pages
ISBN: 1-4027-5954-1
ISBN13: 9781402759543

Click here if you would like to purchase Perfectly Arugula. (via B&N)

I will also give away one copy of Perfectly Arugula to a lucky Mommycosm reader.

Rules:

1. Leave ONE comment on this post by noon on Sunday, March 15, 2009.
2. Comments will close at 12:01pm on Sunday, March 15, 2009.
3. I will announce the randomly chosen winner sometime Monday, March 16, 2009.
4. You must provide an email address for me to contact you in case you are the winner.
5. Sorry, due to shipping costs, contest is open to US and Canadian residents only.

Update on Monday, March 16, 2009 at 02:06PM by Ashlie

This was a difficult one for the random number picker.  It seemed to churn for an hour.

The one and only comment wins by default :)

So, "Lucy", I will send you an email shortly.