SO MANY DAYS

A tousle-haired child reads, walks, tumbles, dances and flies through these pages. The child is soon joined by a puppy, and the two draw, fly kites and sail—into the sky and over the ocean, on the winds of imagination. The gentle text is rhythmic and sweet: “So many doors in all your days, / so much to wonder about. Who will you be and where will you go? / And how will you know?” McGhee’s understated words are elegant and sure rather than sappy or saccharine. Yoo’s pictures, linocuts digitally worked, make lovely images in a limited palette of greens, blues, browns and yellows. The child’s play is brilliantly rendered in the images: Jumping in a pile of leaves and then blowing on a handful of them finds the leaves flying away metamorphosed into birds; splashing in puddles and building a toy boat segues into a wild ocean ride with a whale. The parent’s voice in the narration is full of love and hope: “You are earth that hungers for sun. / You are song that longs to be sung.” (Picture book. 5-8)