Thursday, November 28, 2013

[BOOK REVIEW] The Three Robbers by Tomi Ungerer




Title:  The Three Robbers

Author:  Tomi Ungerer

Genre: Family / Crime

Year Published: 1963
 

Year Read:  1993

Publisher:  Roberts Rinehart Publishers

Source:  Library

Content Rating:  Ages 5+ (Depictions of Robbery)

Buy or Add on:  Amazon  //  Goodreads

“The Three Robbers" is a children’s book written by Tomi Ungerer and it relates the story of how three ferocious robbers became foster parents when they rescued an orphaned girl from going to her cruel aunt’s house.  This book will surely be a delight for young children to read for many years to come.

Tomi Ungerer did an excellent job at writing the story of the three robbers in a comforting tone.  Tomi Ungerer made the robbers reform their evil ways by putting a child in the picture when the robbers spot an orphaned girl in one of the carriages they were about to rob and therefore, they became foster fathers to all the orphaned children in town when they grew a heart to care for the orphaned girl, Tiffany.  Also, Tomi Ungerer’s illustrations are highly creative as the robbers are mainly displayed as blue faced men dressed in black capes and tall black hats indicating that they are sneaky beings that you usually find in those cartoon spy shows like “Secret Squirrel.”  Also, the backgrounds are colored in mainly blue, white and black and the children in the story are the only characters that are colorful since these images of the children indicate that they are the turning points in the three robbers’ life of crime. 

Parents should know that while the robbers do reform themselves at the very end of the book, their appearances might scare small children and even more, their ways in robbing people might also scare small children.  The robbers look a bit menacing as they sneak around towns scaring off people and then they rob unsuspecting people along the way.  Also, the ways that they scare off the passengers are somewhat more intense then a regular robber just stealing your items and running away with them.  These robbers use an axe to chop down the wheels, then they use pepper-blower to spray in the horses’ eyes temporary blinding them, and then they threaten the passengers with a blunderbuss to get their jewels, which may frighten small children.  Also, the idea of someone sneaking into your home at night might be implanted into a small child’s head and he or she might worry about a robber coming to take them away.  But, parents should assure their children that they will always be there to protect them and that the robbers in the book did not hurt any children as they took them in as their own children and that should send a sigh of relief from the child.
 
“The Three Robbers” is a magnificent masterpiece from the creative mind of Tomi Ungerer and its story of three fierce robbers reforming themselves into foster parents is truly a delight to hear.  This story is surely to be a great classic for children for many years to come and is suitable for children ages five and up due to some menacing content about the robbers robbing the people.



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