Betsy Hatton

This is a delightful book! It is the letters that Sue Spencer sent to her college age daughters while she was in Africa with her husband and 3 sons. I have reread it many times--and laughed every time! She makes living in the back of the beyond seem an adventure.

This is an outstanding codewords book: its puzzles are small enough that a lot of letters are used only once. Because of this, some of the words are very long, often including seldom used letters like zookeeper and xylophone. Like other similar books, you are given 3 letters. It is just difficult enough to provide mental stimulation to keep me off the streets and out of bars.

This is the kind of book parents love to read to their kids! The dialogue is amusing and the characters very well rounded. I never thought to have empathy for a cranky cockroach, but I just want things to turn out well for these meadow denizens! Each chapter is short enough for a bedtime story for preschoolers; older kids will appreciate that the chapters each contain an episode, with a crisis and resolution. The concepts of days, seasons, and predators are described from a bug's perspective. Adults tend to think of insects with distaste: it is so easy to forget a child's fascination with the tiny critters of the world. The Meadowfield books will help parents recapture that lost wonder, and children will find new creatures to seek.