WHEN I HAVE A LITTLE GIRL

From the illustrations, the girl narrator could be one of Eloise's cousins— on the brunette side of the family but also directly descended from the same double jointed imp. The text is a series of her announced intentions on the upbringing of her future daughter, who is clearly not going to have it as tough as her mother is having it. For instance, nobody is going to tell her child to stop eating snow or to come out of the water just because she's turning blue and, "She can have a new box of crayons every week even if the older ones are still good and just not pointed any more." In small books like this, the humor is often either all adult or all child. The blend in this one is perfect for shared laughter. These are the temptations and frustrations that girls have inherited. It staggers, while it delights, the imagination that all the way back to Neanderthal days, mothers were probably restraining their daughters from tickling the fox-faced furs of the imposing ladies in front of them.