What If We.

PreS-Gr 1–“On the first day of summer, Max did everything around the house. And on the second day of summer, there was nothing else to do,” opens the pages of this thoughtful and endearing family story. With his little sister Mimi in tow, Max tries everything to entertain himself, from playground games to a zoo trip. But his constant fretting about what he might be missing out on somewhere else soon creates an endless cycle of wondering what to do next. Finally, Mimi sensibly points out that he’s had the perfect playmate right under his nose all along, and that’s when the fun begins. Yoh lets the earnest voices of her two characters shine, in an idyllic world of play and wonder that is free from adult intrusion. As Max’s imaginative hypotheticals get more outlandish, Chang cleverly contrasts mundane scenarios with their eye-poppingly enhanced alternate versions overhead in a series of enormous thought clouds that resemble psychedelic billboards. The book’s design deeply enhances the reading experience, with sentences weaving in and out of speech bubbles and across inset panels indicating the passage of time. The soft line art and watery color palette, a combination of digital and traditional media, draw readers’ eyes deftly across the page. The first and last pages of story text make a delightful pair of bookends. Both spreads feature a cutaway drawing of the house with the children engaged in a variety of activities. In the former image, Max is paying more attention to the materials at hand than to his sister. At the end they are utterly absorbed in each other’s company. Fittingly, the final page reads: “On the last day of summer, Max and Mimi did everything around the house. And there was so much more to do together.”