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THE FLYAWAY BLANKET by Allan Peterkin

THE FLYAWAY BLANKET

by Allan Peterkin & illustrated by Emmeline Pidgen

Pub Date: Nov. 15th, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4338-1047-3
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association

A child’s blanket sails off on a wind-driven odyssey, then circles back to perform its proper function. Think “cozy.” Also “agenda.”

Just as young Jake and his mother settle down for a nap in the yard, a gust of wind snatches his treasured blue blanket off the clothesline and sends it flying past families of birds, bunnies and other animals. Despite wooden writing (“The calf watched it fly into the farmer’s garden. Moo! Moo! Moo!”), the journey has a ritual, dreamlike quality that both evokes Jake’s drowsy state and is reflected in Pidgen’s fanciful cartoon scenes. Unlike the animals and the idyllic outdoor settings, the blanket has a nebulous, undefined quality, seeming less a material object than a symbolic representation of one. And, indeed, after an anxiety-inducing suggestion that the blanket might fly away forever, the author instead sends it back to settle over sleeping Jake and his mother and then closes with a note about the importance of comfort objects to children.

An intimate episode—written by a professor of psychiatry, published by an imprint of the American Psychological Association and clearly, if indirectly, addressed as much to parents as to children.

(Picture book. 4-6)