A PLACE FOR PAULINE

A big sister finds her place.

In this uncredited translation from the French, Pauline feels squished. Among her busy parents (and pregnant mother), a rambunctious little brother, and an adorably toddling little sister, she feels overburdened by responsibility but otherwise underappreciated and often lost in the shuffle. Like generations of storybook elder siblings, she decides to strike out on her own, with plans of jumping a ship and visiting her grandmother in France. But her runaway bag becomes weighted down with nostalgic nonessentials, and her mother interrupts her plans with a private gardening session. The illustrations are delightful; Pauline is especially so, with her huge, emotive eyes and crude yet deeply relatable body language. Bold lines, a generally muted palette with pops of red and green, and energetic motion are highly appealing visually. All characters are light-skinned. The structure and style—longer than a typical picture book, organized into panels but on the short side for a graphic novel—might make it hard to find its ideal audience. Middle-grade readers often want something more substantial, while a picture-book crowd will find this a challenging read-aloud given the sound effects and speech bubbles. However, there’s enough humor, love, and resolution here to pull in readers of any age.

Sweet, simple, and deftly executed.