Mr. Big and Tiny

by Bill Kennedy, Linda Roesch (Illustrator)

A friendship tale between an American Bison and a sparrow that flies above the herd of buffalo at the National Buffalo Museum at Jamestown, N.D. Written and illustrated for the young reader or even to be read by a parent. The book emphasises friendship among creatures who are very different.

46 pages, Hardcover

Published March 2, 2020

About the author

William P. "Bill" Kennedy, born 1951, is the former editor-in-chief of A+ Publishing, including MacComputing, A+, and PC Games magazines. Kennedy was an early participant in Real World Interface (RWI) along with Grinnell More, inventor of the PackBot. When RWI combined with Colin Engle, Joe Jones and Helen Greiner of ISRobotics to form iRobot. Kennedy went on to co-found, along with CEO Jeanne Dietsch, ActivMedia Robotics (later MobileRobots Inc.) where he led development efforts for the Pioneer series, the reference platform for research robots. As of 2010 he is chief technical officer of MobileRobots Inc.

Bill Kennedy is a co-author, with Chuck Musciano, of HTML: The Definitive Guide and HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide by O'Reilly Media.

Reviews

[Samantha Kolber · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this zero stars I would. It’s horribly written and even more horribly edited. Halfway through the book, the main characters Mr. Big, a Buffalo, and Tiny, a barn swallow, are all of a sudden referred to as Thunder and Tailspin, respectively. So the first half and second half the characters have different names. Then, the afterword that talks about the real Mr. Big and the sculpture created to honor his memory, is written so poorly it makes ZERO SENSE. It just starts talking about pharmacies and developing film like Wtf? I can’t even read this part to my daughter because it reads like gobbledygook. I have to distill the information she needs that explains the picture of the sculpture. Also, the summary on the back of the book says that the Buffalo and barn swallow become friends “as they see what they have in common.” Um. They have NOTHING in common, but what they do have is a friendship formed out of mutual benefits and respect. Why not just say they become best friends as they learn to live together in harmony? You don’t have to have things in common for that and in fact the book never talks about what they have in common. Which is nothing because one is a huge mammal and the other is a flying bird. However; the Buffalo has bugs constantly bothering his eyes and ears and the bird hangs onto his head and eats the bugs, therefore making Mr. Big more comfortable while catching dinner. Symbiotic relationship. You’d think that could have been a neat lesson in a children’s book 🤔. Anyway it’s too bad because my daughter loves the artwork and the story does have potential. It just needed an editor. And this is why self publishing doesn’t always work. Please, authors; if you self publish, GET AN EDITOR!