The One Great Gnome
The One Great Gnome by Jeff Dinardo illustrated by Jhon Ortiz When eleven-year-old Sarah is transplanted from New York City to rural Connecticut, she has no idea how she will survive. Never could she have imagined that a garden gnome come to life would lead her to an underground adventure to save the entire gnome race. I listened to the audiobook version of this story and absolutely loved the addition of sound effects to enhance the story. Looking at the printed version, I saw the addition of illustrations with the text as well. I thought these nice additions. However, while my seven-year-old daughter found this story enjoyable, I had a difficult time getting into the story. Although it is geared toward a younger audience, I was frustrated by the overuse of dialogue tags and, at least in the second half of the story, the near absent use of pronouns, leading to names being repeated many times in a short period. An example of thi...