Archibald's Swiss Cheese Mountain: 09/18/08

Like American Girls About Town, Archibald's Swiss Cheese Mountain is a charity book. This children's book by Sylvia Lieberman and illustrated by Jeremy Wendell benefits Feed the Children and Variety: The Children's Charity. The book won the "Best Children's Book Award" at the Hollywood Book Festival earlier this year.

The story is about Archibald's adventures in Mr. Hochmeyer's grocery store. At the start of the book he's going out on his first solo trip to forage for food. He has to keep his mother's instructions and warnings in mind. Although Archibald does run into some trouble on his trips to the store the main danger in his life is hunger especially as the number of children in his family grows.

Archibald is aimed at ages 4 - 8 so I read the book with my son. It's 48 pages long with lots of complex words and is certainly over my son's reading comprehension. It works best as a book to read to a child, rather than a book that a child in this age range will read.

With the length of the book and the complexity of the vocabulary I think the basic message of being a hungry child in an impoverished home was lost on my son.

Things we spoke of instead:

• Why doesn't Archibald have to pay for the food he scrounges?
• What's a radiator and how does it work?
• Why does the refrigerator tickle Archibald's feet?
• What does sauerkraut taste like?
• How can he hide in the cheese?
• Why does grease make things slippery?

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