YOUR DADDY WAS JUST LIKE YOU
by Kelly Bennett and illustrated by David Walker
A grandmother regales her grandson with an account of his father’s infant- and childhood, including achievements and frailties and always touching base with the refrain, “Just like you.” The strength of Bennett’s text is in its honest and loving confrontation of not-so-adorable aspects of childhood: “Most days your daddy was my sweet boy. But some days he turned into a wild thing. He raised a ruckus. He crashed. He teased or bossed or bashed.” That aside, there’s little to surprise readers. Where this book truly misses its potential is in Walker’s soft-focus acrylics, which simply depict what the grandmother describes of her son’s childhood and fail to mirror the text’s “Just like you,” never making the visual connection between the child-father and his son. (Picture book. 3-5)