To say that Finn, a blue-shirted, yellow-booted tot with more than a passing resemblance to Humpty-Dumpty, is out of sorts is to severely understate the case. When his mother offers him his usual plate of peach slices—the very idea!—he throws the mother of all fits: There’s “Thunder in the nursery! / Lightning in the kitchen!” and so on. Elliott spins out the climatic metaphors for Finn’s tantrum up to and including a blizzard, the emotional weather so severe that the family’s little white dog flees the house entirely. Ering, always atmospheric, goes happily nuts with the premise, his mixed-media—charcoal, oils and grease pencil—illustrations almost palpably three-dimensional in their wind-blown vigor. If Finn’s fit is impressive, its aftermath is equally effective: The little boy sits, collapsed, on the floor, exhaling his last puff of anger before he decides that he’d “like those peaches now. / Please.” While likening a child’s tantrums to a severe storm is apt enough from an adult perspective, it may be too conceptually remote for little ones, for whom When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry may still ring the most emotionally true. (Picture book. 3-5)
