THE DANDELION WISH

A dreamy and slightly surreal picture book with a truly odd visual kink. A boy and a girl, Sam and Jo, are playing in a field of dandelions on a languorous summer’s day. Sam tells Jo that if you blow all the dandelion seeds in one breath, your wish comes true—so they do, and it does. An incredible carnival appears, with a mermaid, a dinosaur, a pirate ship, the man in the moon, and a golden carousel. At night, there’s a bonfire and fireworks, and after the day’s events the two children are carried home by their parents. The next day in the dandelion field the magical carnival is gone, but a breeze comes by to lift all the dandelion seeds—and the children wish again. The illustrations are done in shimmering, summery colors and an impressionistic, almost pointillist, style. However, Jo, who is a light-haired child on the cover and in the first illustration or two, becomes a black-haired, African-British child later in the book. If this is a printing error, it’s an egregious one; if the producers changed their minds midstream about the ethnicity of Jo, they should have aimed for consistency. (Picture book. 5-7)