I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother Deborah Stevenson Alko, Selina . I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother; written and illus. by Selina Alko. Knopf, 2009 34p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-95627-0 $18.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-85627-3 $16.99 Ad 5-8 yrs Our young narrator awaits a new sibling with anticipation and curiosity. He's particularly curious about the baby's appearance—will the new sib in their multi-racial family look like their father ("semisweet dark Daddy chocolate bar"), mother ("strawberry cream Mama's milk"), or various other relatives and friends with skin and hair in tasty edible tones? There's no real plot here, just a series of descriptions, and some of the scenarios eliciting those descriptions ("When we play, will you, like Lola, leap . . .") are awkwardly contrived. The subject is one rarely treated in children's literature, though, and it's a tasty celebration indeed of the various shades found in many individual families as well as the larger human clan. Alko's illustrations are high-energy gouache full-bleed images enhanced with collage elements. Some of the compositions are overweighted with floating background details that diffuse the focus, and the childlike vigor of the draftsmanship occasionally tips into crudeness (while the baby with pennies for eyes presents some unfortunate associations), but the images retain a lively intensity that underscores the celebratory tone of the text; viewers will be particularly taken by the food imagery, occasionally taken to a whimsical visual point (kids as gingerbread people, kids' faces on ice cream cones). Despite the book's flaws, this could make a useful counterpart to Joyce Carol Thomas' The Blacker the Berry (BCCB 7/08). Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois