CAREER DAY

The mother-daughter team of Anne and Lizzy Rockwell (Thanksgiving Day, 1999, etc.) presents their fourth visit to Mrs. Madoff’s busy, bright, and active classroom. Today is career day, when students bring special visitors to school to talk about their work. It may be scary for a child to introduce his or her guest, but the first-person narrator does a fine job of introducing his bulldozer-driving dad, Mr. Lopez. Charlie’s visitor is his mom, a judge; Kate’s dad plays bass in an orchestra at night, practices, and handles child-care during the day, while his wife works in a bank. The multicultural class meets a writer, a paleontologist, a school-crossing guard, a nurse, a veterinarian, a sanitation worker, a carpenter, a grocery store manager, and even a student teacher’s college professor. A full-page illustration shows each worker on the job; smaller details facing these pages introduce them and their host children to readers as well as to the rest of Mrs. Madoff’s class. A sparkling, family-centered, no-threat introduction to considerations of what might be fun for little ones to do when they grow up. (Picture book. 2-5)