SUNSHINE

by Jan Ormerod ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 1981

A wordless good-morning book in which a little girl awakens first, rouses her father and then her mother, dresses herself and finally sees to it that her laggard parents--dad's reading the paper in bed, mom's gone back to sleep--also get up and get going. It's a pleasant-enough conceit, clearly spelled out in the pictures; but, as so often happens, nothing is gained by suppressing words altogether except to make a tiny anecdote into a puzzle. A few words would add resonance, would make the figures real people and the happenings a story; even the little girl's acquisition of a name would help. A couple of sequences might still have been handled without words, because there's an oh-look! element involved: the wide-awake little girl, in full daylight, peering in and seeing her parents still asleep; the toast burning in the kitchen while her father absent-mindedly reads the paper. Otherwise, the wordlessness merely tends to make the whole thing abstract and insubstantial.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1981

ISBN: 1845073908

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1981

Categories: CHILDREN'S