DADDY LOVES HIS LITTLE GIRL

Cash follows up his purple tribute to the love between mothers and sons (Momma Loves Her Little Son, 2009) with an equally labored celebration of the father-daughter bond. With this effort, he (mostly) leaves behind opaque figurative language on his flight of fancy, but scansion and sense still frequently elude him: In Katmandu, “We’ll feast on cakes stacked ten feet high, and dance to Bluebird’s whistle. / We’ll run faster than the tiger through the flowers and the thistles.” Burckhardt’s folk-art–style images replicate the stiff tableaux of the companion title, offering little warmth to readers. It is a shamelessly over-the-top goo-fest that consistently reaches for the easy image with seemingly no regard to art or craft. (Picture book. 3-5)