WHO DOES WHAT?

Swipe left to find people doing different jobs.

This latest in the Slide-and-Learn series is similar to Who Lives Where? illustrated by Kiko (2019), but focuses on people instead of animals. Six locales are featured: concert hall, studio, city, market, farm, and school. A lot of information is packed into the six one-sentence descriptions of each of the jobs shown in the six vignettes on each spread. The 36 careers highlighted are diverse. Yes, there’s firefighter, but there’s also drummer, fashion designer, optician, and beekeeper. With each job represented by just one worker, gender stereotypes are almost unavoidable. For example, on the “market” page, the butcher, sausage maker, and fishmonger are male presenting, while the baker, pastry chef, and florist are female presenting. Still every spread shows equal numbers of both apparent genders, along with a variety of racial presentations. On each recto page, sliding tiles hide each worker. The game is to use the clues on the left page to guess the career associated with the object shown on each slider. The sliders move easily. In fact, when the book is tilted to the left, all the sliders move left, revealing the answers and spoiling the game. Still, after a few shared readings little people will happily and independently amuse themselves with this book/game.

For active toddlers ready for a reading game.