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This review come to you from based on a requested Read and Review. My philosophy is that all reviews are honest and meant in the spirit of teaching and encouraging by pointing out any issues that detract from the piece the writer has created. I also strive to make comments that may help attract others to read this piece and enjoy what it has to offer. Please take what you need from my offering and feel free to take the rest under advisement. All the best, Liv
Author: lizey 
Hello lizey  , this is in response to a requested review of {l-item: 2114940}. I have read the piece thoroughly and also passed it by my 16-year-old for her feedback as well. The first question that we both had, which might be helpful for all reviewers is if you placed the age range of your target audience at the top or bottom right-hand corner (for example) of your work. This gives clarity to the reviewer so that we can do a better, more respectful job of reviewing your piece. Overall, we both loved it and could even imagine some great illustrations for the book. There are some grammatical issues that will make the piece better, which I am scanning into a PDF and emailing to you for your convenience. The mark-ups are extensive, so I feel like that is the best way to tackle an issue like that in a review.
As I am writing this post in the middle of one of our infamous spring storms in Texas, please send me a reminder email if you have NOT received that email within the next 5 days (today is 4/2/17).
One of the big issues here is breaking out the dialogue from the rest of the story. It is important that the reader is clear about the conversation between the characters and is able to distinguish it from the narration. This will make it easier for those reading the story out-loud to voice act the story in a fluid presentation.
In paragraph 5 of the first chapter, Victor is remembering a direct quote from his parents. It does not seem like a present conversation (or by the way I read it, it is not) so you might consider putting that quote in italics to make it distinctively different from the conversation between the two brothers.
Let’s take a look at another line. You wrote in the beginning of the 8th paragraph of Chapter 1: Victor the littlest of the two-little wombats, was not as excited about the stories that he heard from the others like Elliot was. Developmentally speaking, the sentence structure will not be as comprehensible to a young reader as say a reader in middle school. You might try something like this: “Elliot, being the older brother, was always exited to hear the old stories of their family. Victor, however, always felt sad, confused, and became bored because he did not remember his parents or the others.”
Please understand, when I think about writing for children, I take in eclectic stance on education drawing from the works of Charlotte Mason, Jean Piaget, as well as Oliver and Rachel DeMille to name a few. In other words, there are concrete developmental phases that occur from birth to death and have “windows of time” within which an ability such as abstract thought, or comparative thought becomes a skill a child is capable of. For example in the 4th grade standardized testing booklets in Math, the authors have placed simple geometric equations for finding the volume of a cylinder (for example). Most children fail this particular skill because conceptual and hypothetical thought does not come into play until a child is at least 12 years old. A 4th grader who passes this skill is in the minority and an exceptional child who probably had early exposure to concepts that would teach the skill—Such as measuring ingredients for cooking such as my daughter experienced from conception forward in her life. In other words, I ask myself frequently, “will my friend’s 8-year-old understand this, and perhaps feel “a little challenged” if I write this part, like this….” Creating is great, but it’s the difference between potentially winning a Caldecott Medal and being a bargain bin filler. Both are important, but for increasing the number of contemporary “living books” available to young readers these days is really important.
Next, let’s take a look a little further down where the dialogue ceases to have quotation marks around it. THAT gets confusing. Work on getting all of that in line and working a little better for the story.
Please look for my private email for the rest!
Write on fearlessly!
Olivia
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Liv
My review has been submitted for consideration in "
Write On! 
One thing that makes a piece attractive to the reader is a pleasant visual presentation. The presentation of this piece is chaotic to this reader. The double spacing challenges the equilibrium and makes it hard to focus on the prose and ideas that the writer is attempting to get across.