Cassie’s Creepy Candy Store - Review

Cassie’s Creepy Candy Store by Sheila Sauvageau-Smestad is a 40-page storybook for children that will be a favorite for the Halloween season – when candy is not only unavoidable, but is abundant. Halloween is also an appropriate time to purposefully gross out the kids, with humor and light-hearted fun.

The author employs a simplistic rhyming scheme and a good text flow for its readers, which will get the children uttering "EW!" and have a giggle or two. This is a very unique story line with strange and unusual goodies like Chocolate Spiders and Bloody Eyeballs that enrapture and delight children. Cassie’s Creepy Candy Store will work well for school or library reading kids groups as well. I definitely enjoyed the talent of illustrator Kelly Berg, who captured expressions, moods and emotions so gracefully and yet used a simplistic style. As an additional bonus, two fun games and an interesting treasure hunt adventure await children at the end of the book.

If you are looking for a book that will teach a useful moral life lesson – this isn’t for you – but what you will find is a light-hearted entertaining story. Cassie’s Creepy Candy Store is a book to be read just for the fun of it.


ISBN#: 0976773228
Author: Sheila Sauvageau-Smestad
Illustrations: Kelly Berg
Publisher: A Better Be Write Publisher

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A Picture of Perfection

Never work with children or animals... easier said than done when you're a parent. Over the last few years I have tried many times to get the perfect photograph. With one child, trial and error often results in an image you are happy with. And with the advent of the digital camera, dud photos are a thing of the past. However, with three children, I've finally realised it's not possible to get the perfect picture, even with the help of a professional photographer!

I recently enlisted the help of such a man for the all-important christening photos. All dressed up and looking the picture of perfection, my husband and I set off with our adorable little troop to the studio!

Upon arrival our eldest took off upstairs with his eldest, our middle one trailing behind.

The baby then decided he absolutely had to be fed! As a breastfeeding mum it was no mean feat undoing my not very practical top to quite literally feed his demand! Eyes averted and a hastily placed teacloth spared some blushes, as we all waited until baby had his fill.

Finally, everyone gathered together, we were ushered into the studio, only for our eldest daughter to put on a display worthy of a two year old - and she is six! Tempers fraying we waited, coaxed and encouraged her to act her age!

Needless to say the session ran into overtime, the photos were hastily shot and as we left we vowed never to put ourselves or any photographer through such an ordeal again!

They say every picture tells a story. We received our pictures with trepidation. Amazingly the photographer had captured some wonderful angelic moments - although we still have some trouble believing the children in the pictures are ours. Maybe some new photographic wizardry replaced sullen angry little people with little shiny happy people.

However it happened, neither of us can look at the pictures without being transported right back to the stress of the day itself.

And so the beautiful photographs languish at the back of the wardrobe until such a time as we can laugh about the situation and our own naivety as parents. We thought it would be easy...

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