Your Mommy Was Just Like You

by Kelly Bennett, David M. Walker (Illustrator)

Overview

Once upon a time-according to Grandma-Mommy loved getting messy, wearing kooky costumes, and dragging out bedtime with just one more story. She collected bottle caps and dandelion fluff, and didn't know how to tie her shoes. Sometimes she was a terror, but most of the time she was a sweet potato. Just like her own little girl today.

Kids love to hear about what their parents were like as children, and this celebration of moms and the little girls they were will inspire lots of laughter and memories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101647028
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	03/17/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Kelly Bennett lives in Houston, Texas and Jakarta, Indonesia.

David Walker lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

A grandmother regales her grandson with an account of his father's infant- and childhood, including achievements and frailties and always touching base with the refrain, "Just like you." The strength of Bennett's text is in its honest and loving confrontation of not-so-adorable aspects of childhood: "Most days your daddy was my sweet boy. But some days he turned into a wild thing. He raised a ruckus. He crashed. He teased or bossed or bashed." That aside, there's little to surprise readers. Where this book truly misses its potential is in Walker's soft-focus acrylics, which simply depict what the grandmother describes of her son's childhood and fail to mirror the text's "Just like you," never making the visual connection between the child-father and his son. (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews

This follow-up to Your Daddy Was Just Like You (2010) follows the format of its predecessor, as a grandmother tells her granddaughter all about raising the girl's mother. Bennett smartly covers the good along with the bad—as a child, the girl's mother was adventurous, imaginative, and active, but "some days she turned into the terror!... On those days she was sent to time-out. Just like you." Walker's acrylic paintings capture the story's emotional highs and lows, as well as its warm humor; the overall tone, though, is one of assured love throughout the generations. Ages 3–5. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

The illustrations for the book are loving tributes to boyhood, even in its messiest, mud-jumping state.

Booklist

PreS—A grandmother looks at an old photo album with her granddaughter, telling her stories about her mother when she was little. Each page shows something about her childhood, from nicknames to temper tantrums, daisy chains, and scraped knees. The grandmother explains how hard her daughter worked when she was trying to learn to read and how stubborn she was about picking out her own clothes. The youngster sees pictures of her mom dressed as a frog, a magic fairy, and a beautiful princess. The illustrations are soft and gentle, complementing each milestone mentioned in the story. Perfect for intergenerational lap sharing.—Kris Hickey, Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH

School Library Journal