Finally, it’s begun to feel like summer down here in Southern California. We’ve had such mild weather (global warming hasn’t come our way yet, it seems), I was wondering if we would get any hot days before school started up again. Now there’s a topic you think there would be a lot of books on — the heat, the summer, escaping to the beach…the need to get cool. Got to be a plethora of that in picture books, right? Well, not so much. At least I can only come up with two in my home! I love these two, but I’m wondering what I’m missing…
Here are my two hot day reads, great to look at when you’re cold in the winter or when you’re hot and irritable and need something to distract the little ones from beating each other up…
1. A recent purchase, The Hot Day by Sheila Greenwald (The Bobbs-Merrill Company – 1972).
Funny and old-world charming. Only three colors in this book. A schoolbus yellow for the hot, some grey for neutral, and light blue for the cool. Blue comes from a fan. It’s the only one in the house and belongs to the boarder who has a room in the family’s home. On that hot, hot day, that fan and its room become a source of envy by all those youngsters. When evening comes and Momma and Poppa go out to dinner and the boarder goes out to the theater, you can guess where all those youngsters go. Yes, they delightfully and wickedly get their cool.
2.Hotter Than a Hot Dog by Stephanie Calmenson, illustrated by Elivia (Little, Brown & Company – 1994)
This one uses lots of yellow and pink to make you feel hot and sticky and blues and white when you finally get the cool. Grandma and her granddaughter flee to the beach to escape the city’s heat. Great back and forth playing with words between the grandma and child. ”I’m hotter than a salamander in the sun,” says Grandma. The child responds with, “I’m hotter than a turkey in the oven!” All the sensory details and descriptions – the iron dragon of the hot train, the ouch of the hot sand, the ouch of the cold water — like “jumping into a bowl of ice cubes,” she says — allow you to feel it all and return with them happily at night when it’s cool.
