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I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL! by Stephanie Blake

I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL!

by Stephanie Blake and illustrated by Stephanie Blake & translated by Whitney Stahlberg

Pub Date: July 14th, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85688-4
Publisher: Random House

Little Simon doesn’t want to go to school. “No way!” is his omnibus answer to his parents’ reassurances that he’ll have a wonderful time. There are no surprises to this plot, which has seen dozens of variations over the years, but Blake’s cartoon bunny, drawn in childlike fashion and placed against bright, simple backgrounds, will appeal. A couple of sequential spreads—of Simon clicking his bedside lamp on and off (“I’m scared. / I’m not scared”) and of his predictably wonderful first day—are both good, if not earthshaking, examples of graphic storytelling. This slight French import stands as a simpler complement to such sophisticated fare as Kevin Henkes’s Wemberly Worried (2000). (Picture book. 3-5)