The title is Margie Surprises Doc, but Margie does not surprise Doc. Rather they talk about Doc's birthday and what he might like, but there is no surprise. In fact, there is nothing. The book just ends and I kept scrolling because I thought there were more pages.

Honestly the book was a little confusing and bizarre. Margie meets Olivia, who is an opossum. Even though opossums are nomadic, Margie thinks Olivia can join their animal family. Then the book veers off and there is a lot of skunk spraying, which seems strange. The plot veers off here and then there are a couple of vocabulary words that are later defined.

I liked the words and the definitions, but overall, this book fell short for me.

This is cute book that teaches you about animals. The live in a veterinarian's backyard and are happy there. When an opossum wanders in, she's welcomed. The boy skunks are practicing spraying. Their Mom is eating. And then someone brings up the fact that the vet's birthday is coming up. They all get together and make plans to find something to make his birthday special. I wonder what all they will find...

a lovely kids book for all the family to enjoy i love the way the animals interact and are thoughtful

Title Inaccurate; Too Much Skunk Spraying

I thought this story was just bizarre. So, is skunks’ spraying the equivalent of fart jokes in this book? That's how it came across to me, and I was not wild about it. This book appears to be meant to be read to a child, but I think some language is not quite right for children who would be read to. While, of course, books are the perfect way to introduce new vocabulary to children, I don't necessarily think there should be so many in such a small book. The title feels incorrect because we never get to see Margie actually surprising Doc. You shouldn't call a book a certain title and then not have that in the book! The ending was also very abrupt. I got a free ePub version, and I actually kept scrolling to see if there were anything more. But there was not.

Overall, I thought the book was super cute. I’m an animal lover so Doc doing all the nice things for the animals just made the book special. I did think it ended very abruptly. That was really my only complaint with it. The pictures and storyline were very cute and I can see children enjoying the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and Virgina K. White for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my review.

This is a fun story of adventure and intertwines facts into it. Letting kids learn new things with entertainment is my favorite type of stories. There are opportunities for learning new words (myopic!) which my only feedback would be to provide the definition of some of these bigger words immediately after it. I love increasing a child's vocabulary in 'real time' so I love this author is doing that! Watching my daughter (9) read it was sweet as she laughed often and was curious about some of the new facts and words that came from reading this story.

Thoughts from the Mini-Me-Reviewer: This story is about the animals that live with Doc the Vet - or as the kids call him: The Animal Fixer. There was a skunk that was nearsighted (myopic!) and Doc made her bonnet glasses so she could see better and watch her kits. I liked this book was about animals and their family. I loved that there was a lot of different animals. I mostly liked King Tut the Siamese cat. I would recommend this book to around seven year olds as there were only five chapters - so its a good book to read and be introduced to chapter books.

I wasn't very impressed with this book. It's not very exciting and sometimes it veers too close toward being an informative. Also it ends before Doc gets his surprise. Since the title promises a surprise for Doc, it would make a little more sense to have the surprise and Doc's reaction before the book is over.