Help Wanted, Must Love Books

September 30, 2019
Shailey, a brown-skinned girl who sports a pink bandanna, adores bedtime because her dad reads to her every night. But when he gets a new job, his work-life balance suffers, and the child fires him from his position as bedtime storyteller. Selecting a replacement from the applicant pool proves challenging, however, when none of the fairy tale interviewees (Snow White and Cinderella among them) can get the job done just right. Warm digital illustrations highlight Shailey’s plight, and the job posting, which Shailey updates after each failed round of interviews, provides a colorful recurrent motif. Professional diction throughout—such as “individual applicants” and “impressive résumé”—and a message about screen time seem more geared toward adult caretakers than young kids, but the look at distractions readers face in a constantly moving digital world will likely prove resonant with adults and children alike. Ages 4–7.

November 15, 2019
When her dad gets too busy for bedtime, Shailey gets busy replacing him. Shailey loves bedtime, basking in its rituals of sliding into her PJ's, brushing her teeth, and combing her bookshelf for the perfect story. But then her dad gets a new job, and suddenly he is either too busy or too tired to perform his bedtime duties adequately, leading Shailey to fire him and post an announcement for his replacement. Shortly before bedtime, the interview process commences. Illustrations depict the casts of popular stories: the Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the Big Bad Wolf, etc. The storybook characters, mostly white, animal, or edible, create quite the ruckus, causing Shailey to tweak the announcement again and again. Finally she finds a promising job seeker. With his familiar looks, just-right voice, and strawberries-and-chocolate chip cookies smell, Dad has all the prerequisites for the job, provided he keeps work off-limits during bedtime! The HR jargon the book depends on may sail over young readers' heads, but the book's saucy tone has the potential to delight a broad audience. But even though the book features a black protagonist and her father and a few of the storybook characters are depicted as characters of color, the latter all come from the Western European canon--a telling detail that undermines the fun. Cheery and lighthearted--and a lot less inclusive than it thinks it is. (Picture book. 5-8)

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January 1, 2020
Preschool-G When a young African American girl's bedtime reading routine is interrupted by her father's busy work schedule, she fires him as storybook reader and posts an ad for a new one. Charmingly, a number of recognizable children's book characters respond, from the Three Little Pigs to Goldilocks, each one humorously failing in a manner that mirrors their own stories?Sleeping Beauty conks out mid-sentence, the Gingerbread Man runs off with the book, and Cinderella gets soot on the pages. Things are looking bleak until the final candidate nails his interview and gets hired. Kids will have fun trying to figure out the identity of this victorious reader, who looks suspiciously familiar. Readers will easily engage with this adorable book, both through its familiar literary characters and the young girl's love of reading with a parent, making it a welcome addition to the collections of librarians or reading specialists. Other relatable tales about loving to read include Sarah Stewart's The Library (1995) and Sandra Pinkney's Read and Rise (2006).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)