My wife and I have been reading this, among others, to my soon to be one year old daughter. As is the case with the majority of children's books when reading aloud the fun is to be had in giving the characters their voice. For the part of this books' (anti)hero, Fingers McGraw I slip into a kind of bizarre Bronz accent (I don't know why really, it just felt right) plus I can pretend I'm James Cagney (which is odd but again feels right). Our daughter loves the varied characters that emerge in the telling of the story. The majority of pages are bright and bold and the way Ed Vere plays with the techniques used to bring the tale to life is a lot of fun. I think we'll be reading this for quite a while and highly recommend it to others.