Woo Hoo! You’re Doing Great!
by Sandra Boynton; illus. by the author
Preschool Little, Brown 40 pp.
4/23 9780316486798 $17.99
Self-help gets the Sandra Boynton treatment with energetic antics, deadpan humor, and ear-pleasing rhyme. “Have you been feeling kind of low? / A little lost? / A little slow?” A well-meaning, loud-squawking chicken acts as a personal pep squad to Boynton’s familiar menagerie. “THERE’S SURELY NOTHING MORE FANTASTIC THAN SOMEONE WHO’S ENTHUSIASTIC!” the shouty narrator insists, proceeding to cheer on a roller-skating pig, ballet-dancing hippos, and others. But some activities—taking a nap, for instance—are best accomplished without a cheering section (“You. Woke. Me. Up!”), and the tale takes a turn as the chicken suffers an identity crisis: “Oh no!!! I made a mistake!!! I’m no good at this!!!” A mouse friend provides reassurance about mistake-making and own-bucket-filling through rest, self-care, and positive self-talk. The words of wisdom are at an appropriately preschool-ish level but can be taken to heart by anyone. Lest the message come across as heavy-handed, the endpapers close (as they opened) with the chicken’s extremely loud and boisterous cries of “WOO HOO!”
From the March/April 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
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