The grass is always greener in other kids’ families...or is it? Jason wouldn’t trade his parents; his dad builds houses and his mom loves staying home to take care of the family. Kate’s mom is a dentist who drives a big convertible and her father’s a happy eye doctor; she gets to stay up till 8:00 watching television. Thus does the (unnamed) narrator admiringly examine the families of several of his friends. His own parents? His mother is a French teacher who also plays the piano—sometimes they play duets—and his dad is a writer who works at home and takes him on nature walks. Would he trade them? Bernardin’s detailed acrylics effectively evoke a spectrum of interesting family lives and include an African-American and an Asian-American family, and Numeroff’s prose is clean and direct; the refrain, “He/she thinks they’re the best,” is a pleasing one. But her title/premise is an odd and potentially off-putting device to launch this overview of family diversity, which, in its focus on middle-class happy families, ends up not much of an exploration. (Picture book. 4-6)
