WHEN PAPA COMES HOME TONIGHT
by Eileen Spinelli and illustrated by David McPhail
Spinelli’s When Mama Comes Home Tonight, illustrated by Jane Dyer (1998), celebrated the nightly reunion of working mother with child. This companion presents readers with a working father (the frontispiece shows him dashing out of a bank, briefcase in hand) who joyfully meets his waiting child at the gate at the end of the day. The child has either been home alone all day or his caregiver has snuck out the back door, as McPhail provides no evidence of any other nurturing presence as the two cook and eat dinner, play, repair a toy wagon and enjoy a bedtime story. This overachieving dad even makes his kid a kite while he’s asleep. While Spinelli’s verse scans as gracefully as in its companion, this makes for an odd alternative-family portrait. (Picture book. 2-5)