Eric's Big Day: A Bicycle Race Unlike Any Other Hardcover – Picture Book, April 8, 2014

This poor book deserves a one star rating. The book is extremely poorly written. I find it difficult to believe that the book had an editor, or that it took longer than half an hour to write. I read this to my son yesterday and was shocked at how poorly it was written. I read dozens of children's stories to my son and none have approached the poor quality of this book.The plot was at best, lacking, and the prose was a joke. The illustrations were acceptable.The two five star reviews are those who received the book free to review. I have to question the veracity of their ratings, or whether they even looked at the book.

This is a fine story. Clearly not going to be a classic. But fun for those of us who love cycling and want to pass it on to young children.

Awesome little story! I originally thought the email was fake since my name is Eric and my wife's is Emily :)We love reading the story to our son!

Great book. Our three year old loves the story, and as a cyclist, it's fun to have a children's book to read that has a cycling element.

great book, will be giving it to grandson.

Love it!!

Really cool

This is an odd little book from sports publisher VeloPress. It suffers from what appears to be localization issues: missing commas and awkward phrasing. That's weird, because while the book was published last year in France under the title, Le Grand Jour d'Eric, the author is actually British. Was the text translated into French and then back to English? I don't know. The typeface is truly terrible as well. It may even be Times New Roman, which has no business being in a children's picture book.Textual criticisms notwithstanding, Eric's Big Day is endearing. The primary theme of friendship is reinforced convincingly. The secondary theme of fair play is somewhat diluted by the fact that the boy wins the bike race, despite never having been entered nor having completed its entire length. That bit of fantasy may be a bit much for adults to take at face value, but children are more forgiving. I was reminded of  The Two Cars , with which this shares both European heritage and an unorthodox race-winning conclusion.Even with all that, you should buy this book for your child. The images are, to use some of this book's interesting vocabulary, Lovely and Splendid. (Exclamations such as those would have looked so much better with hand-lettered text.) Every page has artwork which is at once thoughtful and active. The pen and ink watercolors would suit a child's nursery. The book's cover image--the boy on his bicycle flying along, the flower petals flying away in the opposite direction--creates a lasting memory. Did Rod Waters do the artwork? Has he done anything else? Qui sait?3.5 stars, rounded up for the artwork.

This is a very nice book which we read often with my son. He loves the story.

Warm, charming, witty... best book I've ever read.