mark frauenfelder, calling the book brown's magnum opus, described it as "true poetry about perceiving the world around us" that "rekindles the sense of wonder we were born with". the book has remained in print since its initial publication, and is frequently used in early writing education since the simple pattern is easy for young children to mimic; crista boske and autumn tooms further attributed the book's popularity in education to "the value of working with a book that overtly invites the reader to think for themselves in the midst of learning the concrete and abstract simultaneously"