Not Enough Lollipops

When Alice, who has white skin, dark hair, and sports pink spectacles, wins a wagonload of lollipops in a school raffle, all of her classmates clamor for one: “Can I have one, too?” “Sure, if there’s enough,” says Alice. But her nonchalance strikes a definite chord: her peers respond first with panic (“There aren’t enough?!”), then with bribes, threats, and sob stories (“I haven’t had a lollipop since my last haircut,” wails a shaggy kid), and even attempts to turn one classmate against another (“Don’t count the New Kid. This prize is for your real classmates”). Player’s (Paletero Man) digital cartooning uses a candy-hued palette to emphasize the school’s escalating mania, with compositions that lean into the book’s horizontal format offering a sense of the commotion’s emotional and geographic sweep. Finally, Alice insists the kids line up for the treats, and sanity is restored: some realize that lollipops aren’t such a big deal, apologies are proffered to offended parties, and it turns out there are more than enough to go around. Though Maynor (A House for Every Bird) plays it all for laughs, the story should spark conversations about scarcity mindset. Ages 4–7. Author’s agent: Minju Chang, BookStop Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words. (Jan.)