Little Rat Rides is a chapter picture book written by Monika Bang-Campbell and illustrated by Molly Bang. It tells the story of when the main character, Little Rat, takes riding lessons. Although she is nervous at first, Little Rat overcomes her fears and is even able to win a ribbon. I thought Molly Bang's illustrations were colorful and fun and really brought the story to life. ( )

Review: This book was a very cute first chapter book for young children. There were pictures on every page that had to do with the story. The pictures were very clearly drawn and help engage the reader.

Summary: This book is about a little rat that wants to be like his father and learn to ride horses. The little rat goes to the farm and meets the horse Pee Wee that she was going to ride. She gets very nervous and doesn't want to ride anymore. After her dad finally convinces her she hops on Pee Wee. After slowly walking around, little rat realizes that riding horses isn't really that scary. Little rat goes to the farm to ride every day. The story goes through how little rat rides all the time. One day Pee Wee was walking and didn't realize that she was stepping on little rats foot. Little rat was in so much pain but couldn't get the horse off. After another animal helped little rat get free, she doesn't want to ride again. After being convinced to try again she does and starts competing. Pee Wee and little rat get 5th place in the competition, and little rat couldn't be more proud of their performance.

Argument: In my opinion, this was not the best book for children to read. It had a great overall message, but it was not that interesting. Children might enjoy the illustrations in this book because they went along with the story very well.

The overall message of this book is to never give up. After getting stepped on by Pee Wee, little rat didn't want to get back on and ride again, but she did and she ended up loving riding. Little rat went on to riding in competitions and won with her horse Pee Wee. If she wouldn't have gotten back on and ridden again, she would have never known how much she liked riding. ( )

Another outing in which Little Rat overcomes her fears of something that starts out a little bit scary - this time horseback riding, this is aimed at readers who have already achieved some fluency. There are chapters and the text spacing is normal although there's still plenty of white space. I really like that Little Rat does just all right at the horse show - too often the road to success seems to come effortlessly in fiction. The biggest problem for me lays in this sentence: "She [Little Rat] could care less about being a fancy rider like her dad." I understand it's a colloquial variant of the phrase and lots of people say it, but this is a beginning reader in which children learn word patterns and proper sentence structure. Either use the phrase correctly (Little Rat couldn't care less) or remove it entirely. Maybe I'm being too picky - I guess I would still recommend this, but it I was using it myself, I would make sure to point out the error to the early reader. ( )

Although I wasnt really sure about Molly Bang's books. I was interested to see the other books in "the rat" series. This book was very and almost too similar to the last one, but I enjoyed the illustrations that she did for this book. I feel like she draws random pictures of this mouse that she got for the book series and after she draws the pictures, then she tries to put a story together with the pictures alone. ( )