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  • The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair by Kate Bernheimer
  • Jeannette Hulick
Bernheimer, Kate The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair; illus. by Jake Parker. Schwartz & Wade, 2013 32p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-9687-5 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-86878-8 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-98787-8 $10.99 Ad 6-8 yrs

Many an adult will recognize this little girl who loves her long, long hair but does not love to brush it. The girl’s tangled tresses eventually attract an amiable group of mice, which entertains their host at first—until they begin eating most of her food, refusing to let her take a bath despite her protestations, and keeping her up all night with their nocturnal antics. The final straw is when the girl’s teacher forbids her to bring her beloved doll to school anymore: “Each child may have only one friend for naptime, and it appears that by now you have one hundred mice in your hair.” Luckily, the mice understand, and the girl finally enjoys a long bath and a [End Page 137] good comb-through of her locks. The vocabulary and the tone of the narration are more suited to an adult audience, but the kid-friendly premise will maintain reader interest, and animal fans in particular may be entranced with the notion of having so many live-in furry friends. Parker’s illustrations, drawn in pencil and colored digitally, are smoothly stylized, and the little girl, with her increasingly towering heap of brunette hair, is a pleasant point of focus; the dreamy haze that uniformly overlays the scenes, however, is distracting. There are parents who will weep with joy at the prospect of a book that may encourage little Susie or Sam to finally brush that mane, while kids may enjoy the what-if speculation here.

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