Cash follows up his purple tribute to the love between mothers and sons (Momma Loves Her Little Son, 2009) with an equally labored celebration of the father-daughter bond. With this effort, he (mostly) leaves behind opaque figurative language on his flight of fancy, but scansion and sense still frequently elude him: In Katmandu, “We’ll feast on cakes stacked ten feet high, and dance to Bluebird’s whistle. / We’ll run faster than the tiger through the flowers and the thistles.” Burckhardt’s folk-art–style images replicate the stiff tableaux of the companion title, offering little warmth to readers. It is a shamelessly over-the-top goo-fest that consistently reaches for the easy image with seemingly no regard to art or craft. (Picture book. 3-5)
