Ok, so I loved this book ... the rhyming couplets are simple, yet humorous and the illustrations are utterly fabulous.

However, I feel that I have no choice but to rate this book as only 2 out of 5 Stars because of one word that was used in the story.

Before I mention what word I am talking about, I want the Author to know that I am choosing to wait to post my review on my blog, on Goodreads, and on all my social media sites.

I am going to wait until the end of April 2021 to post my reviews in hopes that the Author removes the offensive word and replaces it with something else.

I do NOT believe that the Author meant any offense when he wrote the following:

"Limping gimply home..."

I am choosing to believe that the author meant no offense to the disabled community when he used the word "gimply." If you go to Dictionary.com and read the definition for "gimp," this is what you will find as the official definition:

"US and Canadian offensive, slang, a physically disabled person, esp one who is lame."

The use of this term ruined the entire book for me and I know that many people would intentionally avoid purchasing this book for their children just because of this.

I am hoping that the author will choose to voluntarily remove the offending word from his book.

I will check back on Amazon at the end of April to see if this change has been made. Again, I do not believe that the Author was being intentionally discriminative and am hoping that just by me pointing it out to him, it can be fixed before the general public gets hold of the book and a small error in terminology becomes an accusation of discrimination against disabled people.

If it weren't for that word, I would be rating this as a 5 Star Children's Book. The rhyming lends itself wonderfully to the act of a parent reading the story to their child. The story itself will have kids laughing out loud and will have parents chuckling right alongside their kids.

The illustrations are utterly adorable and wonderfully suit the humorous tone of the story.

Again, I am currently rating this book as 2 out of 5 Stars but will happily change my rating if the use of the word "gimply" was not meant to be offensive.

This book was funny and smart - I love the skunk and raccoon! I'm not sure about the allergic reaction bits and how they'd go over with my preschooler, which is a shame since the rest is so clever.