Book Description
for Emma Dilemma by Kristine O'Connell George and Nancy Carpenter
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
“Emma copies / everything I do, / and sometimes / I don’t do / something / I might do / or really / want to do / because / I know / she is / always /watching / every single thing I do” (“Rode Model”). Slice-of-life poems catalog the ups and downs of a sibling relationship from big sister Jessica’s perspective. Jessica can be embarrassed or annoyed or angered by Emma, but those moments find balance—in this collection as in life—by Emma’s companionship, not to mention her appreciation and even adulation for her big sister. There’s a definite sense of story-making as the poems progress, with “Role Model” foreshadowing later events when Emma’s desire to be like her big sister results in a broken arm for Emma and a heavy heart for Jess, until her parents reassure her: “It was an accident.” Kristine O’Connell George deftly reveals the many sides of a sibling relationship, while the pen-and-ink and digital illustrations by Nancy Carpenter make fine use of facial expressions and body language to extend the feelings expressed in the poems. (Ages 5–9)
CCBC Choices 2012. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2012. Used with permission.