Children's Book Review: Elizabeth's Constellation Quilt by Olivia Fu

Summary: 

A story about a child’s love for a parent and a sense of wonderment about the stars

Elizabeth, a little girl mouse, wants to be a sailor like her father, but she has trouble learning the stars for navigation. Then her mother makes her a quilt of the constellations, and before long Elizabeth uses her new knowledge to find her missing father. This charming story of family love introduces the idea of families looking together at the night sky.

Release Date: July 1, 2015

Age Group: 3-7 years

Source: Review copy from author

Reviewed By: Kelli & Kaitlyn

Review:

Elizabeth's Constellation Quilt was a fun, sweet story.  Kaitlyn loved it!  Elizabeth is a little mouse whose father is a sailor.  She wants to sail with him, but cannot navigate because she doesn't know the constellations.  Elizabeth's mom makes her a quilt of the constellations so Elizabeth can learn about the stars.  

Kaitlyn and I loved the illustrations and easy-to-follow story line.  The pictures take up the whole page, and the text is written on top of the illustrations.  Sometimes this style lends itself to difficult-to-read text, but that was not the case with this book.  

There were a couple of things that I didn't love about this story.  First, the way Fu calls Elizabeth's parents "Father and Mother" instead of Mommy and Daddy or even Mom and Dad made the prose feel formal.  Kaitlyn doesn't call me Mother and she doesn't call my husband Father.  She calls us Mommy and Daddy.  For this age group, ages 3-7, I think a less formal way to address the parents would have made the story flow better and feel more realistic.  The second thing I didn't love is that the story alludes to Elizabeth's Dad dying!  When I read that page, I was like, WHOA!  That's heavy for a children's book.  Things ended up being okay in the end, but if Kaitlyn had picked up on the fact that the authorities believed Elizabeth's Dad to be dead, she would have been upset.  And with that part being the crux of the story, it kind of turned me off to the book.

However, Kaitlyn loved this book.  She loved the emphasis on stars, sailing, and the love between parent and child.  She also loved that Elizabeth is an only child, just like her.  Kaitlyn also really enjoyed the fact that Elizabeth is a mouse and loved looking at the village where Elizabeth and her family lived.

I recommend Elizabeth's Constellation Quilt, although for sensitive children, I think parents should read the book first to make sure there's nothing that would upset them.