STICKY ICKY VICKY

An outdoors-loving girl overcomes her fear of water in this picture-book debut about positive self-talk.

Vicky, an enthusiastic girl with warm brown skin, dark brown eyes, and curly puffs of hair, loves being outdoors and playing in mud and dirt with her friends. The rhyming narrative endorses this messiness but points out that this behavior is only OK if Vicky would be willing to take a bath each night: “But no, this is not her way.” Vicky’s fear of water keeps her from bathing more than once a week—and leaves her out when her best friends enjoy swimming at the beach. When one friend invites Vicky to a birthday party at a water park, Vicky determines that the time to overcome her fear has arrived. The Ssentamus, a married Australian team, introduce internal voices Negative Ned and Positive Ted to help readers understand how self-talk—and the voice Vicky chooses to listen to—influences Vicky's ability to overcome her fears. The rhyming stanzas flow well throughout and only occasionally introduce an unfamiliar term (fortnight) that might cause young American readers to stumble. Alshalabi’s warm digital cartoonlike illustrations capture both Vicky’s exuberance and her fear, and Vicky’s diverse friends and family (her mother has peach-toned skin with blue eyes and blond hair; her father, a deeper sepia skin tone and curly brown hair like Vicky’s) offer many young readers a chance to see themselves represented on the page. An afterword offers conversation starters for families to discuss fear and courage.

An encouraging tale for young readers with their own fears to face.