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Reviewed by:
  • I Need My Own Country!
  • Jeannette Hulick
Walton, Rick. I Need My Own Country!; illus. by Wes Hargis. Bloomsbury, 2012. [32p]. ISBN 978-1-59990-559-4 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5–7 yrs.

A young girl declares independence and forms her own nation after her brother breaks a vase with a baseball and she gets blamed. Walton lays out steps that one must take in order to create one’s own country, such as locating and naming the country (the girl dubs her room “Roomvania”), creating a flag, a national anthem, and currency, and establishing a citizenry, here represented by a faithful dog, a goldfish, a couple of stuffed animals, and a cat who has a visibly laissez-faire attitude towards the whole endeavor. Walton cautions readers that “not all will go well,” and indeed it doesn’t. Roomvania experiences “civil unrest” (illustrated by the dog chasing the cat), “natural disasters” (the frantic dog and cat upset the goldfish bowl), and “invasions” (the girl’s brother tries to enter her room), but its illustrious leader carries on, eventually accepting an olive branch from the enemy (her brother [End Page 222] sneaks her a piece of chocolate cake): “You will accept their peace offering because friends are more fun than enemies.” Walton’s pithy text and Hargis’s illustrations work well together as both a humorous story about family dynamics and a kid’s-eye view of what it means to be a nation, so adults will find the book doubly useful. Hargis’s clever art, scratchily outlined watercolors, make Walton’s words concrete in a child-friendly way, and the determined, frizzy-haired little girl, establishing rules and printing money with gleeful, if messy, abandon, will win over both kids and adults. Readers will also enjoy following the antics of pets, particularly the lanky ginger cat, who establishes “Kitty-Tania” in a snug cat bed on the closing pages.

Jeannette Hulick
Reviewer
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