ANOTHER IMPORTANT BOOK
by Margaret Wise Brown
Raschka (Like Likes Like, p. 304, etc.) illustrates this previously unpublished companion to the recently reissued The Important Book (1999) with page after page of wriggly children rendered in looping, calligraphic black strokes and freely brushed color. Adopting an assured tone, Brown tracks the development of a child’s capabilities and sense of self: “You can’t quite talk./You can’t quite walk./You’ve found your nose/and discovered your toes./You’ve seen the moon/and felt the sun./But the important thing about being One is that life has just begun.” Her text takes children to age six; by alternating pictures of single children with group scenes, Raschka expands the author’s focus on the individual to make growing up a social as well as personal experience. Think of this as a free-spirited alternative to Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer (1973) and its blatantly commercial reprise, Little Louie the Baby Bloomer (1998, not reviewed). (Picture book. 1-6)