Author: Elisa Anderson
Age: 3-5

The Potato That Did Not Want to be a Potato is ultimately a story about liking yourself for who you are. Unfortunately, the premise of the story is really the only thing I liked about this book.

The Potato that Did Not Want to be a Potato inner page

While I love hand drawn graphics, to me this is a lesson in what not to do. The art is very dark and smudgy. The potato is supposed to be sad but instead looks angry. My kids kept saying, “He’s mad!” when I read that he was sad. Facial cues are important to very small children and this missed the mark.

I also didn’t like that the faces of the fruits and veggies were taped on. Granted, this makes for a faster swap out so you don’t have to draw the entire vegetable again but it felt very clumsy.

Finally, the names of the characters kept tripping me up. Pop Potato and Tommy Tomatoes were fine, but then many of the other characters had descriptors after their fruit/veggie name, such as Jack Apple Red and Little Bird Blue.

The Potato That Did Not Want to be a Potato was not a win in my book. There are six books in the series so far but unfortunately neither I nor my kids are interested in reading more into this saga.