Review: Benny Lost His Blurgle

Title: Benny Lost His Blurgle

Author: Patrick Kaiser

Illustrator: Ariel Kaiser

Publication Date: 10 June 2021

Publisher: Lovely Tale Publishing

Rating: 2/5

Dragons and caves and giants, oh my! This illustrated children’s book will whisk you away on a homegrown adventure with Benny and his dad on a quest to find Benny’s unique sound…who knows – maybe you’ll even find yours along the way!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and BookSirens for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m going to be honest, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t really like this book.

The beginning felt promising, Benny and his dad were going to find his unique sound. I liked the idea that he was getting bullied (okay I don’t mean that to sound bad) because I was expecting the ending to be about accepting yourself. While this may have been the ending it really wasn’t clear because Benny never gets his sound back. We do see the dad get his sound back which didn’t make sense to me. It was never mentioned that the dad didn’t have his voice until this time and I didn’t understand why he had lost his voice and why he all of a sudden got it back.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the illustrations. While I liked how they included the adventures Benny and his dad went on, it just wasn’t my type of art style.

Now let me end on a good note. I liked how the author included rhymes in his writing, it helped with the flow of the story. I also liked how the writing was wrapped around the illustrations, it made the pages interesting to look at.

In conclusion, I think it was a good idea but the execution just didn’t hit the nail. If Benny had gotten his sound back and learned the lesson that it’s okay to be unique I think the story would’ve been better. While I understand that the father may have realized this, it wasn’t made clear and I think children wouldn’t understand this message.