Some Days

This brief, wistful exchange between a mother and her child delivers its emotion between the lines, and Schimel’s translation handles the understatement deftly. The two sit at the table after a meal, the scene and colors gray and quiet. “In our yard, there’s a passageway,” the child says, picturing the mother walking out into the garden with a basket of laundry. She pins two enormous scarlet sheets to the clothesline, and the child twists up inside one of them. Though the portal isn’t always present, “I would like it to always be there, like today.” It’s a passageway to a future full of happy endings, where the child interacts with an unknown figure in a gray hat: “On the other side,// I’ve already learned how to swim// And it’s not cold,// and there’s no danger.// And nothing, nothing at all, can happen to you.” The mother accepts her child’s anxiety and promises only what she can deliver: “Although we may not always see it,” she replies, “we can always go looking for it.” Wernicke shows the two twirled up in another set of sheets, looking for the passageway together, in this portrait of a parent who hears and honors her child’s words. Ages 6–8. [em](Nov.) [/em]