Review for Ellie Makes A New Friend by Marci Fair

                                          

About Ellie Makes A New Friend:

Mom's Choice Gold Award Winner! A beautiful blend of real life and make-believe, The Amazing Adventures of Ellie the Elephant series recounts the everyday life of a stuffed animal. The debut book, Ellie Makes a New Friend, follows the plush elephant as she moves to a new neighborhood and has to find a new playmate.

Written and photographed by mother Marci Fair and her ten-year-old daughter Elle Fair, the story is uniquely illustrated with delightful photos of the little elephant’s journeys through the neighborhood as she tries to settle into her new home. Children will love seeing a toy living in a real-world setting, and parents and teachers will appreciate Ellie’s positive and creative approach to finding answers to her problems.

Fun, playful, and packed with imagination, you won’t want to miss the upcoming adventures of Ellie—and her new friend!

About the Authors:

Mother-daughter duo Marci Fair and Elle Fair coauthor a series of books about ten-year-old Elle’s two favorite stuffed animals, Ellie the Elephant and Pudgy the Penguin. Even as a working mother of four, Marci has always made time to read bedtime stories to her kids and encouraged them to read on their own, as well. A big fan of books and stuffed animals both, Elle enjoys working on this special project with her mom.
In addition to her professional career, Marci is the founder of Kares 4 Kids, a nonprofit organization that has served over 18,000 children in need since 2005. She is also the author of the award-winning book TILT: 7 Solutions to Be a Guilt-Free Working Mom, liberating other women with her hard-won wisdom—“Balance is impossible; memories are better.”

Review:
Ellie Makes A New Friend is about a stuffed animal named Ellie who moves into a new neighborhood looking for a new friend. She gets some yogurt and goes to the playground, but she feels alone. After doing several activities by herself she goes to the library and reads books about making friends. When she goes back to the playground she meets a penguin named Pudgy. They then begin to do everything together. 

This is a simple story about friendship. In this case when Ellie met Pudgy she found out that Pudgy loves to do everything that she likes to do. She met the perfect friend for her. Many children will be able to relate to Ellie's plight and have been in a similar situation when moving to a new neighborhood. In the back of the book the authors ask the readers to send in pictures of their special friends to facebook. Many children will love to do that. My only quibble is that the pages look like a scrapbook project. The pictures are of the real stuffed animals but the backgrounds are too cluttered with other pictures and colors. At times there's a lot going on that can distract attention away from the story. The story is short and simple, so should be the illustrations and backgrounds. 

Overall, young children will enjoy reading this 28 page picture book.