Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Colin the Crab Falls in Love is a beautiful, romantic, and heartwarming children's book by Tuula Pere! If the Francis the Fox series is our favorite of Tuula Pere's children's book series, then the Colin the Crab series is a very close second! Colin the Crab is an excellent character in every sense of the word. Unlike Francis the Fox, he's a great role-model for kids. Colin has a heart of gold—a HUGE, ENORMOUS heart. He is loving, kind, caring, respectful, considerate, self-sacrificing, and unselfish. To top it off, he's hardworking, intelligent, and skilled. At the same time, he isn't a Gary Stu. He's not a Superman without a kryptonite. No, Colin does have weaknesses which are worth exploring. Thankfully, this book and series does an excellent job at that. Colin is a giver and not a taker. That's great, to an extent, but in The Caring Crab he had to learn that there are limits to that. He had to be reminded not to run himself into the ground and burn himself out. He had to learn self-love and to take some me-time. Colin is also a bit conservative in his activities. He doesn't like to step outside his comfort zone. In fact, new situations and activities—especially social ones—seem to make him anxious. He does have a degree of social awkwardness and possibly even social anxiety. That's not to say that he doesn't get along with people. In fact, he seems to be everyone's friend and everyone loves and cares about him. However, he's apprehensive about doing and trying new things that the other characters do. For example, Eddie the Eel is really high on driving his motocopter, probably the best vehicle in town. However, Colin finds the motocopter to be unfamiliar, uninteresting, and maybe even a bit scary throughout most of this book. It's like a grandpa encountering and trying out a drone for the first time. He's content with his cart, which is familiar and practical. He's also not big on fads and fashions. That fact is demonstrated by his encounters with Sally the Starfish, someone who is obsessed with her looks and the way that she dresses. Colin is content with wearing the same ole' overalls every day because they're familiar to him and help to hold his tools. The other thing about Colin, that was also emphasized in Colin the Crab Finds a Treasure, is that Colin doesn't seem well-versed in terms of romance and intimacy. He really doesn't connect well romantically with sea creature-women/females. He is friend-zoned constantly, which was pretty evident in the other two books as well. The females constantly ask him to help them and listen to them vent, but they don't necessarily consider him to be any more than a good friend or like a brother. In this book, Colin has a number of conversations with characters like the Newts, Sally the Starfish, and Mrs. Catfish. In particular, his conversation with Mrs. Catfish, who is widowed, is telling. Mrs. Catfish talks about the pain of losing her husband and missing him dearly, even looking through pictures of their time together. It's hard not to feel for Mrs. Catfish. And this serves the dual-purpose of building up the angst around Colin and the fact that he has no partner and hasn't been able to experience these romantic things. In fact, one of the key moments in their conversation is when Mrs. Catfish makes the off-hand and very painful comment that Colin doesn't know what it feels like to lose a husband or wife. During a fancy dinner with friends, most of whom have a partner, Colin clearly feels like he's missing something: companionship. Eventually, as the title suggests, Colin is able to find someone to love in the form of Clara the Crab, another kind and caring crab who helps Colin to clean the mess in Finley the Frog's museum. Clara & Colin are definitely nominees for “Best Couple!” They are adorable together, complementing and enhancing each other. This book then goes deep into another of its themes: being yourself instead of trying to fit in or do extraordinary things to impress other people. This theme was subtly introduced earlier in the book when some of the other characters tried to pressure Colin into dressing better or driving a nicer vehicle. However, it becomes very pronounced when Colin risk life, limb, and his dignity to learn to drive a motocopter like Eddie the Eel. This results in a bit of an embarrassing and dangerous catastrophe which nearly sees Colin get badly hurt (or worse). Clara, being a great, caring person who isn't shallow, runs to make sure that Colin is OK. Colin then learns that it's better for him to be himself. And, like we said, he's an incredible person! Now, this book had small things that bothered us. Nothing major. For one, the middle portion of this children's book was very wordy and muddled. It was very dense. That's actually something we noticed with this series: the middle portions are very dense and a bit muddled. It also seemed like this book was a rehash of Colin Crab Finds a Treasure, pretty much being the same story. Speaking of that, we kept asking: What happened to Priscilla the Clam? Wasn't Priscilla the Clam Colin's love interest? His girlfriend? Didn't Colin the Crab already go through this romantic arc and find his true love? Or did they just become good friends? If they're good friends, then where is she? Anyway, it's easy to look past these minor things. This is a great book! Check it out on Amazon!
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