Mama, Is It Summer Yet? by Nikki McClure

Mama, Is It Summer Yet? by Nikki McClure

Rating: 3.5 stars

On Father's Day Lorelei, Ben, and I made a list of Daddy's favorite things so that we could give/make/provide those to him.  On the list, tucked between homemade oatmeal cookies and tinkering in the yard, was taking an afternoon nap.  So Lorelei and I happily obliged; we read books to our boys, tucked them into their respective beds, and went to the bookstore.  It was a treat for all of us! 

That morning in the New York Times Book Review was a special children's section.  When they have reviews of children's books, I show them to Lorelei--once or twice we've already read them, which makes her feel pretty proud to know the books that she sees in Mommy and Daddy's newspaper.  Since they had the Children's Bestseller lists, we decided to bring the list along and see if we could find any books on it.  I particularly wanted to read The Quiet Book (I love the idea of it!) and Over the Rainbow.  We couldn't find either of those books (drat!), but we did find plenty of others.

Including Mama, Is It Summer Yet? 

The illustrations are incredibly beautiful.  I looked up Nikki McClure's bio and found out that she arms herself with an X-acto knife and cuts out her images from a single sheet of paper.  Pretty impressive!  The pieces of art she creates for this book are just gorgeous.  I will definitely seek out other books she's illustrated because the images are so captivating.  The text is nicely simple: A little boy asks her mother if it's summer yet, and she says no, and gives an example of how the boy should know that summer is almost here.

However, the story doesn't make me want to read the book again and again.  It reminds me of a road trip I don't ever want to take, with my kids in the back seat, asking "Are we there yet?" and then, five minutes later, "Are we there yet?" and then, five minutes later, "Are we there yet?" and then...  You get the idea.  The story would be so much better if the "Are we there yet?" pages were just taken out (in my humble opinion).

Still, if I were an art teacher, I'd want a book like this within arm's reach to show kids the different types of art that they can create.  It is illustrations like these that make me really appreciate artists for choosing to devote their time and energy to children's books.  What a gift to kids like ours!

PS  Check out the artist/author's GORGEOUS journals.  One for new mothers and one "verb-laden" journal.