Llama Llama Home With Mama

My grandma and I love this book.

Poor Llama. We've all been there.

Perfect read out loud book for the little one who's home sick with Mama. Guaranteed to make anyone listening feel better by the end.

This is the kind of picture book that makes every aspiring picture book author want to rhyme, in hopes of getting their opus magnus as readable as Llama Llama Home With Mama (man, it's way too difficult to type "llama"). While the meter isn't perfect -- I'm not sure there's any rhyme pattern out there that fits "medicine" -- it's bouncy and as imaginative as the simple vocabulary allows.

Dewdney takes her time setting up the sick, bored atmosphere in the first third of the book with whimsical illustrations alongside. Choice scenes are drawn fully, the paper's texture coming through the bold colours for a quirky added effect. The neat twist and shift of the plot perks up the reader and injects an "aww" factor that always makes a picture book a winner.

Parents and kids will recognize and identify with the reversed situation with humour. The scope of this picture book is narrow, but it satisfies with its bright illustrations, smooth rhyme and familiar topic.