IT'S GREAT BEING A DAD

The finer points of various jobs are explored in this tribute to…dads?

“It’s great being a unicorn. I love being a unicorn. Who wouldn’t want to be a unicorn?” The bright, cartoon, rainbow-bedecked spread hardly seems like it belongs in a book about being a dad. Ditto the spreads about being Bigfoot, a robot, the Loch Ness Monster, and a “fairy queen ballerina doctor.” For each of the characters, there are positives and negatives to their roles. For instance, the unicorn’s horn gets in the way of grazing and eating cake off a table, which subsequently gets stuck on said horn. Bigfoot tries to come to the rescue, but it has challenges of its own. And so on. It’s not until the magic wand of the fairy queen ballerina doctor is snatched by a “sneaky flying alligator pirate” that dads are even mentioned. A turn of the page reveals a dark-skinned dad standing amid a scene of imaginative play: it’s great being a dad, as dads can fix it all. What’s not to like? “Sudden makeovers.” Perry’s gouache and Photoshop illustrations clue readers in only on the final spreads, the kids’ clever clothing and costuming choices making their characters come to life. Only one child is white; the rest are various shades of brown, though all have distractingly stylized noses.

The title doesn’t really match the content, though it may spark readers’ own imaginations.