Day Care Days

A boy goes through a typical day at a breakneck pace, impelled by Barrett's (Sing to the Stars) stringently metered text. Beginning in the morning, when the entire family gets ready in the bathroom at once (""Quick, go potty!/ Daddy shaves./ Mommy, in the shower, waves./ Sister, SWISH-SWISH, brushes teeth./ Baby's diaper starts to leak!""), the narrative follows the boy through to the moment when Daddy arrives to pick him up from day care, and ends with a goodnight kiss. In her picture book debut, Murphy uses gouache paints in flat, bright colors with a liberal use of pattern, and does a commendable job of filling in between the lines of the sometimes choppy text. For example, when the boy is the last to be picked up from school, the illustration conveys his anxiety with pulsing colors and subtly conflicting design motifs. This benign book may help kids to think of day care as routine rather than scary, but its focus on the rhythms of the day is not wholly successful. It fails to convey what can be warm and comforting about daily rituals, so the boy's life seems simultaneously hectic and dull. Ages 2-6. (Sept.)