JUST A MINUTE

Becker taps into a universal experience with this sympathetic look at a child left to wait just a minute while Mom runs a quick side errand. Stranded in a department store basement, Johnny McGuffin waits. And waits. And waits. Minutes pass—or are they hours? Or days? Or years? Or eons? Johnny loses track, seeing seasons change, himself growing up and raising a family, then going old and gray. Bearing a panicky expression, his moon face looms in Davis’s crowded, canted cartoons, as confusions of calendar pages and other signs of change whirl through the background. And, adding insult to injury, Mom reappears at last, makes a breezy apology, then waits impatiently while Johnny learns how to walk again. The illustrations inject more frenetic energy than monotony, but Becker effectively captures Johnny’s disorientation by dropping in and out of rhyme in her brief text. Johnny’s experience will have children, and their parents, nodding in recognition. (Picture book. 6-8)