Hello, friends! Today’s book is called Fred Forgets by Jarvis, the tale of a forgetful elephant and his mischievous monkey friend.

They say an elephant never forgets; unfortunately, Fred is not that elephant. No, he’s extremely forgetful, and so relies on his “friend” Monkey to help him remember what he was in the midst of doing. Unfortunately, Monkey is a bit of a prankster – actually, he’s kind of a bully. Monkey tells Fred to do increasingly embarrassing, painful, or dangerous things until at last, Fred remembers what he wanted to do in the first place: sit on Monkey and squish him.

Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of this one. While the illustrations are fun, colorful and dynamic, the story was troubling. Monkey’s exploitation and manipulation of Fred’s memory problem is deeply uncomfortable; his “funny” pranks aren’t amusing, just mean, cruel, and occasionally life-threatening. And unlike Jarvis’s previous story, Alan’s Big Scary Teeth, the bully doesn’t come to understand the error of his ways. Instead, his comeuppance comes in the form of being sat upon – satisfying after all his antics, but hardly a positive lesson for little readers. And while the length was fine, and JJ enjoyed the animals and the vibrant art, and the author does include a pleasantly cheeky final page showing that “no monkeys or elephants were harmed in the making of this book”, I’m not sure if this is one we can recommend. For us, despite its positives, the story simply missed the mark by too much.