Like Milgrim's Thank You, Thanksgiving
, a concise rhyming text here depicts an unnamed child in a series of slice-of-life events. Readers follow a boy and his trusty doll from waking (before the rest of the house, of course) to bedtime. Milgrim divvies up the day into discrete "times," thereby attributing adult-level importance to each activity. The line "Time for swim class./ Time to slide./ Time for stopping./ Time to ride" finds the boy engaged in four different backyard activities, one per page. In the first, he and some friends gather around a wading pool watching their dolls float (or in the case of one doll, sink). Most of the play enables the boy to fill non-gender specific parental roles. He feeds the doll, cooks and reads for it, takes care of its boo-boo, and even stops for a sidewalk gab with a female peer while his "baby" sleeps in a stroller and hers dozes in a toy buggy. No matter what engages his considerable energy, the boy comes across as eager and upbeat, often flashing a wide-mouthed smile that takes up much of his little round head. Milgrim has a keen eye for detail (e.g., the play "stove" is an upside-down box) and a savvy sense of composition—there's never any question of where readers should look first. Preschoolers should enjoy perusing these pages, and comparing how their own busy days stack up against the hero's. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)
