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Reviewed by:
  • Have a Look, Says Book by Richard Jackson
  • Deborah Stevenson, Editor
Jackson, Richard Have a Look, Says Book; illus. by Kevin Hawkes. Dlouhy/Atheneum,
2016 44p
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-2105-8 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-2106-5 $10.99 R 4-6 yrs

A laptime read becomes the story itself in this rhyming blend of metafiction and concept book. First a cozy chair entices the viewer, then the book calls; then a little girl clambers up into the chair for a read with her father that takes her through a landscape of tactile, self-introducing things and critters: “I am wooly, says Sock.// I am wet, says Mitten.// I am fleecy, says Flock (stock-still on a rock).” After the girl encounters the sequence of items, she calls for a break, which pleases her senses with hot cocoa, crumbly cake, and, of course, the comfy chair. The adjectives are lively and often unexpected, and the direct address, simple format, and playful touches [End Page 470] of lyrical ornament will make this inviting for a young audience. There’s a solidity to Hawkes’ gouache illustrations, mostly vignettes against a white background, that gives the fantasy entertaining heft as the girl is tucked into the woolly sock, protects herself from the drip of the wet mitten, and sits comfortably on the curved tail of the cloudy y of “fleecy,” and so on, always accompanied by her kitten. All the adjectives are hand-drawn, often incorporated into the figures: “hard” gets its h from the shape of an igloo, for example, and the o in “hot” is formed by steam rising from the cocoa. Lapsitting youngsters will delight in the girl’s journey, and they’ll be easily tempted into a game of tactile adjectives for things in their own lives.

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