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THE SCHMUTZY FAMILY

Delightful and unpretentious in its approach to welcoming the Sabbath.

The Schmutzy family, appropriately named for their carefree exploration of all things messy, cleans up perfectly at the end of each week for a proper Sabbath celebration.

From Sunday until Thursday, Mama and Papa Schmutzy’s brood of five play, create, and discover. They wade in “the malodorous Feldman Swamp” and bring an assortment of flora and fauna back. At home, they decorate their clothes with tomato sauce, enjoy their “blue period” with blueberries, gather earthworms in the vegetable garden and paint additional fruits on their pineapple wallpaper. Through it all, this modern Jewish Mama is unfazed, going about her motherly chores without a “tsk or tut.” But on Friday morning, her Yiddish persona comes out as she exclaims, “Oy! Look at this dirt! You’re FARSHTUNKEN, all of you! And it’s nearly SHABBOS. We can’t bring in the Sabbath smelling like COWS!” And so the clean-up begins, culminating in a wonderfully full Friday-night Shabbos dinner with an extended family of 12, followed by an early-morning Saturday walk to services. A combination of India ink, watercolor, acrylic, pencil and pastel artwork depicts the humorous chaos of a family that balances a live-and-let-live attitude with a weekly ritual and routine.

Delightful and unpretentious in its approach to welcoming the Sabbath. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-8234-2371-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Holiday House

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012

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SWEET DREAMING

A familiar take on the bedtime struggle, this tender nighttime story will safely soothe readers to dreamy bliss.

Rawlinson takes on the bedtime battle with a patient mother who finds herself on the losing end.

“I can’t sleep!” Molly starts innocently enough. Mother and child commence the bedtime story ritual. In flowing, rhyming text, the mom suggests soothing imaginary scenes including imagining she’s a “camel” in a “desert land” where “the heat makes you sleepy” or being “in a little boat rocked by a sleepy sea swell.” Each attempt is usurped by Molly’s imagination: “Camel’s thirsty,” she interrupts. “Could it please have a drink?” And: “Let’s have pirates as well, with monkeys and parrots and treasure and fighting.” The mom’s gentle pleas to keep it quiet seem futile against the energetic creativity of Molly. Yet she makes one last effort, invoking the image of being on a “tropical land” with “palm leaves” that “sway in the breeze.” At least one person eventually falls asleep. Rawlinson uses subtle humor and sparse lines to narrate. Paired with Wong’s sweet and simple pencil drawings, filled with subdued hues and gray shadows, the story has an overall calming tone. Molly and her mother are depicted as Asian in the illustrations. Unlike Molly’s mom, adult users of this title are likely to find sleepy success.

A familiar take on the bedtime struggle, this tender nighttime story will safely soothe readers to dreamy bliss. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-4926-3442-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

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BAKE LIKE MOMMY

Half-baked—but sweet nonetheless.

A child “helps” Mommy in the kitchen.

The first-person text is narrated by a child whose feminine clothing and hairstyle suggest she is a girl and recounts her delighted efforts to bake with her mother. These efforts, however, seem more likely to cause consternation than pleasure, but the mother’s reactions to her daughter’s spilling sprinkles on the floor, pouring milk into many more cups than needed for pancakes, and blowing a tower of paper muffin cups across the table, among other things, never appear on the page. Instead, each spread over the course of a week features the girl’s antics in the kitchen, resulting in a list of sorts: brownies on Tuesday, meringues on Thursday, a Swiss roll on Friday, etc. Playful, descriptive language and the naïve, faux printmaking style of the digital art create an engaging tone: “When [the Swiss roll] was cooked, we slathered it with cream and Mommy rolled it up. Then all the cream OOOOzed out of the end. It looked like a roly-poly sausage.” Still, the book has just about as much substance as one of the pair’s meringues, and readers may find themselves wishing for more of a story to sink their teeth into. Both mother and daughter appear white.

Half-baked—but sweet nonetheless. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-910716-64-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Boxer Books

Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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