Snobbles the Great: A Snooze Patch Story is about a fruit-eating snake who saves the other snakes of Snooze Patch from a terrible mongoose. Jason Dobkin and Erika Gragg combined a mix of art techniques with a rhyming narrative to create a unique product. The goal is to inspire parents and teachers to incorporate creativity and art into daily activities.
Unfortunately, I have to say that it didn't work for me. Though we really wanted to like Snobbles, it didn't really work for my family when we read it together. Somehow the artwork ended up being underwhelming (or overwhelming, which I'll talk about in a minute) and the story falls apart in the second half of the book.
I do respect Dobkin and Gragg's approach to try to inspire artistic expression. The idea of combining multiple artistic disciplines of painting, sculpture, photography, stage design, lighting, and cinematography is a good one. But in this case, it often produced images that were far too busy to enhance the story and inspire creative expression.
For example, on the first page the opening image of Snooze Patch reveals very little to contribute to the text - "Sneaking and sliding around in their sleep, dreaming of sweet little morsels to eat, sensing the sun rise over them brightly, six snakes in the Snooze Patch slithered slightly." I would expect to see one or more snakes waking up and see a sun breaking over the horizon. Instead, we see a strange building in the distance, a desert valley with some rocky peaks beyond it, and a few snake holes and cacti.
A couple of pages later we're introduced to the main character of the story, Snobbles. The only thing in the picture hinting that Snobbles is the main character is that he's not blurry in the background of the image like the other snakes and features.
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