THE OK BOOK

Promoting the virtues of adequacy, a stick figure with an “O” for a head atop a “K” body demonstrates moderate abilities to skip, climb, hide, share, swim and other common acts. The narrator’s OK with that, because “One day, I’ll grow up to be really excellent at something. I don’t know what it is yet…but I sure am having fun figuring it out.” Fluent lines and occasional patches of smooth color give the minimalist illustrations an easy visual flow appropriate to the low-pressure premise. Consider this esteem-building descendant of Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer, illus by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey (1971), a healthier alternative to the pushier likes of Jamie Lee Curtis’s I’m Gonna Like Me, illus by Laura Cornell (2002), or Anne Morris’s Hats, Hats, Hats (1989). (Picture book. 6-8)