‘Amy the Red Panda is Writing the Best Story in the World’ by Colleen AF Venable, illustrated by Ruth Chan, revolves around Amy and her best friend Mervin, a sloth, and the story they are starting to write together. However, when Amy begins telling the story, she finds unwanted opinions coming from every other nearby animal. All of the ideas leave Amy uncertain of how to move forward with her story, and unsure whether she really wants to, since the illustrations show her to look terribly confused and upset about all of the unsolicited advice she is getting.

The story shows how sometimes people throw their opinions into the mix without being asked, and dealing with this is never easy. Sometimes people have a vision, as Amy does in this book, and losing that as a result of so many people coming out of the woodwork with their own thoughts on the matter can certainly be aggravating. Instead of finding the path she wants to take with her writing, she finds herself giving up. Then her best friend Mervin chucks one of the letters on the page at Amy, and she finds herself smack in the middle of a letter fight. She comes to realize that her friendship with Mervin beats anything that had already happened that day, which proves the fact that sometimes people just have to sit back and let life happen to them rather than trying to make stories up on their own.

Some of the best decisions in life come out of seeing where life takes you and not overthinking things. Even when others are doing the overthinking, it is still difficult. Figuring out one’s own story and path in life and shaping it the way one wants it rather than how others are saying to do so is some of the best advice this story offers.

You can find ‘Amy the Red Panda is Writing the Best Story in the World’ by Colleen AF Venable here.

*Review originally posted at YABooksCentral.com*