Ava’s Spectacular Spectacles

The other night, my 7 year old asked me to read her a few books that we had on our shelf that we hadn’t read yet. For those who don’t know, I’m an Independent Consultant with Usborne Books & More, so whenever new books come out, I purchase them, but I don’t always find the time to actually read them. One of the books that she chose was Ava’s Spectacular Spectacles. I really didn’t know much about this book other than it was about a little girl who didn’t want to wear her glasses. That’s true enough, but so much more!

Ava is a young girl who doesn’t want to wear her glasses. However, when she doesn’t wear them, she can’t see things in class. Fortunately, her teacher has an ingenious was of encouraging her to see the world differently. She shows Ava a book of fairy tales and puts a marvelous twist on them! Red Ridding Hood would never have mistaken the wolf for her grandmother if she had been wearing her glasses. 

Then teacher and student go through a variety of fairy tales and nursery rhymes and change the story just by making the main character wear glasses and see the world a little bit more clearly. By the end, Ava is ready to put her glasses on.

What a fun book! E and I were having so much fun reading it. Think of all of the little mistakes that we make that would be altered if we could see clearly. Even the egg wouldn’t have fallen off the wall if he wasn’t wearing glasses, probably because he would have realized that oval shapes on walls is not the best idea.

So there are two reasons that I think this book is pretty cool. First of all, we are fairy tale lovers in this house. It opens up a world of possibilities to play games with your kids about what other stories might be changed if someone worse glasses. Or perhaps they could write a story taking a fairy tale and add the glasses in, fill in the details.

The second reason that this book is important is because it can be hard to find out that you have to wear glasses. Some kids love it, some not so much. I think Harry Potter has helped the current generation since he made glasses cool. But being different is hard. Perhaps kids don’t like the way they look in glasses or they fear that people will make jokes. Who knows what goes through a kid’s head! But the reality is that a doctor isn’t going to tell you that you need glasses unless you really do. Isn’t it worse to have the world going on around you and not being able to understand? Poor Ava couldn’t read the words in front of her without her glasses, but with them? The whole world opened up!