PLAYTIME FOR RESTLESS RASCALS

It’s time to get to work having fun.

A brown-skinned child awakens to Mommy’s command to “get to work,” adding, “Your job is called play.” As narrator, Mommy tells this story in second person to the child—“You’d play all day / if I let you”—and talks as if this conversation about work is an oft-repeated ritual between herself and her child. In matter-of-fact text that exudes tenderness, Mommy recounts how her little one plays in the rain, in the sun, and in the snow, in the fall leaves, at the duck pond, and in many other places, indoors and out. Readers might recognize this mother-child pair from Grimes and Zunon’s Bedtime for Sweet Creatures (2020) and Off To See the Sea (2021), making this story feel like a continuation of a larger narrative that offers an insider’s view of one Black family. Zunon’s highly textured collage illustrations emphasize the importance of imagination: The child hosts a tea party with two dolls and a bear, who sit around a table with “yummy invisible cakes”; later, the child also builds “trains and trucks” from various and sundry household objects. In every spread, Zunon’s illustrations highlight this family’s bonds. When Daddy comes home, he plays tic-tac-toe in sock feet with his child on the floor while Mommy finishes napping on the couch after telling Daddy, “Your turn.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A stunning, warm story about the many ways that play sparks joy.