Barbie and the Diamond Castle (Barbie) (Little Golden Book)

I read bed time stories to my two little ones every night, and consider myself an expert on these books :)

Our old Diamond Castle book got destroyed (like all of our books eventually).

So I ordered a replacement book on Amazon.

This book left out a lot of details like the twin musician boys.

I don't like this version as much as the other version we had.

If this story didn't have the name "Barbie" attached to it, I doubt anyone would give it the time of day. I understand that it's supposed to be an abridged version of an animated movie of the same name, but I don't think that's much of an excuse for how poorly constructed this book is.

First off, it's hard to tell what age this book is targeting. There are too many characters and many of them don't really serve any purpose in the story. The paragraph and sentence structure lack fluidity and the author seems to try to compensate for the bad writing by using too many big-girl words. My 3-year-old gets bored two pages in and my 5-year-old can't keep up with whose doing what because there are just too many names. And it's not like my kids are dumb; we read 3-5 books each night ranging from toddler to 3rd grade and the 5-year-old often prefers to read them herself.

I'm not really surprised by the poor storytelling. We have a number of Barbie books in our vast collection of childrens books and they all pretty much fair the same way. They don't all display the same weaknesses, but comparing any of them to many of the wonderful childrens books out there, Barbie books just don't tend to be very good.

If you want a convoluted story with unnecessary filler pages and pointless characters, this book will please you immensely. But if you read with your children as a means to create a lifelong love affair with books and to foster engagement in the stories, don't waste your money on anything with the name "Barbie" on the cover.

My 5 year old granddaughter is a Barbie fan and loved the Barbie in the Diamond Castle movie. So we got her this book to also sharpen her reading skills and help develop a love of books. She likes this book also. My only complaint is that this book is a very short and abbreviated version of the movie. Wish they would have included 5 to 15 more pages. So I give 4 stars instead of 5.

This book is very colorful and easy to read for my first grader. If only it was printed on recycled paper.