IF I WERE A LION

A little red-haired girl defends herself against her mother’s accusation of wildness in a very inventive way. With her round face just this side of caricature, she protests being in the time-out chair in the rhymed text. “Wild? / Who me? / That’s so absurd. / How could she even use that word?” While one might wonder what this little tyke is doing using words like that (and “precocious,” later on), we listen as she describes kinds of wild: like a lion, breaking dishes and scaring the cat; greeting visitors with outstretched tongue like a frog; rummaging through the garbage like a coyote. In each case, the animal in question, in fine, full frenzy, appears in the picture frame of a perfectly normal house, wreaking the described havoc in gorgeous pinks, lavenders, and aquas. In the end, she’s pushed them all into a box that she, in the time-out chair, is sitting on, as apt a metaphor for controlling one’s behavior as can be envisioned. Tremendous read-aloud possibilities. (Picture book. 5-8)