THE DADDY MOUNTAIN

Another crowd-pleaser from Feiffer, this one featuring a surprisingly (for him) non-neurotic child who takes on a tricky challenge: climbing her standing father. Freely changing relative sizes to make the task seem all the more forbidding, Feiffer depicts her in bright oranges, greens, and flesh tones against monochrome paternal segments. Radiating determination, she negotiates ankles, knees, belt, shirt, and shoulder in succession until, in a climactic scene that folds up and bursts out in full color, she perches exuberantly atop the head of her heroically proportioned papa. Mama may cover her eyes in horror on the final page, but children will share the young mountaineer’s triumph—and is that a layer of metaphor lurking beneath? Surely not. (Picture book. 5-9)