Sophie’s Terrible Twos by Rosemary Wells (review)

It’s Sophie’s second birthday, and the terrible twos are right on schedule. She doesn’t want to wear her pink dress (“No pink!”), her new fairy wings won’t fly, and her breakfast blueberry pancakes are inedible (“Sophie didn’t like to eat two things mixed together”). Luckily for both Sophie and her increasingly vexed parents, Granny knows just what to do. In this charming return appearance of her latest rodent heroine, Wells captures the good, bad, and ugly of being a two-year old with accurate specifics and amusing readaloud phrasing (“I know someone who has turned the corner onto Grumpy Street,” says Sophie’s mother). Watercolors, ink, and gouache lend themselves well to contained but highly detailed scenes, where the personalities of central characters and mere passersby alike vividly emerge, particularly through their nuanced sartorial choices. Wells’ sweet but smart drawings flesh out the well-paced text and provide additional humor, as when Sophie’s blocks stray into the page gutter during one of her temper tantrums. The size and detail of the pictures make this a good lap read, with plenty to talk about with those young readers who will sympathize with Sophie and covet her winning birthday present—in a lovely nod to Max and his wolf suit, a sabretooth tiger costume that displays the wild thing within every toddler.