Tales of the Sugar Hollow Twins and Their Very Most Favorite Stories
Book #1
By B.J. Dana

In a time when children’s literature has turned out multi-book empires with movie tie-ins and merchandise around stories such as a boy wizard’s adventures and a Series of Unfortunate Events, B.J. Dana’s gentle, sweet Takes of the Sugar Hollow Twins might seem tame. The collection of four stories about children and animals doesn’t center on the tykes in the title, or link the stories together through the children telling stories. However, the collection does give us a slower, more innocent style of storytelling that has a definite “mouths of babes” truth.

The twins of the title, Chad and Markeetah, and their older brother Jon Jon, become concerned when a house in their neighborhood seems to burn at night, but is normal again in the daytime. It’s the sort of mystery that demands investigation. The kids rely on their own world and their own wits to solve the mystery. Dana never eliminates the adults from the picture, and the parents share in the enjoyable conclusion to the twins’ mystery.

Like “Dragon Tales,” “Arthur,” “Barney,” and “Caillou” on PBS, the stories center on incidents tame by some authors’ standards, but conveying worthy messages (thankfully not through lecturing) of cooperation, compassion, and manners. The most amusing is a story in rhyme called “The Amelioration of Armondo’s Aggravation” about a young boy who looks for the answer to a temper tantrum over licorice. Armondo, who looks a bit like Max, a youngster in “Dragon Tales,” turns to nature for inspiration and answers. Nature also seems to be the author’s inspiration, since her stories are set in forests, canyons, and even in Armando’s own backyard, where he meets crocodiles, cuttlefish, and daddy-longlegs (reminiscent of the Nick Jr. series “Stanley”).

True to children’s lit archetypes, the animals in the stories do talk, but emerge as characters with problems, rather than two-dimensional, cutesy-cuddly, saccharine scenery. The children also are not idealized moppets, but children with their own language, attitudes, thoughts and feelings.

The two animal tales focus on animals helping each other. Kids and adults enjoy reading animal stories together. This book is enjoyable family fare.