WHAT WE WEAR WHEN WE TAKE CARE

A primer on goggles, helmets, and other safety equipment.

“What do we wear when we need to take care?” asks Finan. Using minimal text and vibrant art, she explains that “sometimes we wear helmets to protect our heads in case things clatter, clonk, bump, or crash!” Action verbs are large and bold against backdrops of helmeted adults doing construction work and helmeted children using skateboards and other vehicles—including a wheelchair—at a skateboard park. The child who’s just fallen off a bike is obviously not badly hurt, and the other characters are smiling and cheery. The text continues with other safety gear: “headphones to protect our ears from sounds that boom, rumble, bang, or whiz,” “goggles to protect our eyes from things that fizz, spark, splish, or splash,” and “masks to protect from germs when we ahhh, achoo, cough, and chatter.” Finan’s minimal yet energetic text conveys information effectively; it’s easy to imagine preschoolers acting out the text, using safety equipment as props. For each piece of equipment, we see adults and children alike at work and at play. Dynamic hand-painted, digitally colored art uses a pleasing palette of neon yellow and multiple shades of blue. People depicted are diverse; laudably, we see adults of color in a variety of jobs, from beekeeper to doctor to firefighter.

Rudimentary information in a perfect package.