I Won’t Give Up My Rubber Band
by Shinsuke Yoshitake; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Chronicle    48 pp.    g
5/22    978-1-7972-1492-4    $15.99

In this endearing picture book, a little girl is thrilled when her mother lets her keep a discarded rubber band. “Yay! I have a rubber band. This is my rubber band!” She imagines all the things she can do with it, both mundane (putting her hair in a pigtail; tying up future love letters) and much more ­imaginative (corralling all the bad guys in the world; using it as a catapult to “go anywhere I want in one jump”). Along the way, she also offers musings on what people treasure and why. Yoshitake’s (The Boring Book, rev. 11/19) expressive, humorous ­illustrations capture the full range of the girl’s ­emotions—from her joy in ­acquiring the rubber band, to her ­fierceness when knocking out an ­invading alien with it, to her disdain at being offered gold and ­jewels in exchange for it, to her distress when it inevitably breaks. But this irrepressible spirit isn’t down for long, and Yoshitake offers not just one optimistic twist, but two (see back cover). Simple, childlike, funny, and even a bit profound.

From the July/August 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.