Leaving your family for the first time to have a sleepover, or to go to summer camp, can be a little frightening for a child. Even though you are told what to expect, you still cannot be sure what awaits you. In today's picture book you will meet a mother and child who have a unique, and often amusing, way of coping with an upcoming separation.
Away
Emil
Sher
Illustrated
by Qin Leng
Picture
Book
For
ages 5 to 7
Groundwood,
2017, 978-1-55498-483-1
Summer
vacation is just around the corner and soon a little girl will be heading off
to summer camp for the first time. She does not want to go. At all. She and her
mother are both busy people, and so they leave sticky notes for each other around
the house. In her notes the little girl makes it clear that she is not going to
camp, “Not EVER!”
Back and forth the notes between the two go.
Mom tells her daughter that she has got her bug spray, which everyone knows is
a necessity at camp. Her daughter, in response, tells her mother that she
cannot leave Lester, the family cat, because he needs her too much. On the
family calendar Mom adds a sticky note indicating that she and Lester will have
a “movie night” while the little girl is gone.
Then Mimsy, Mom’s mother, comes to visit,
and the little girl finds out that when Mom left for camp she cried. Mom
explains that her tears “didn’t last” and her memories of sleepover camp are
still “as warm as biscuits.”
Going away from home to attend summer camp
for the first time can be hard at first. This wonderful story shows us how a
mother reassures her little girl about the upcoming adventure. We also see how
the two of them have a warm and loving relationship that is full of humor,
patience, and good times. Children will enjoy seeing how Lester the cat manages
to get himself included in most of the scenes in the story.
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