My Dad

According to one little boy, his dad is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread. Equally at ease jumping over the moon and banishing the Big Bad Wolf, this fearless father, in his hideous brown plaid bathrobe and blue-striped pajamas, seems capable of anything. The awe and admiration in his son's tone are gratifying; his hyperboles are droll. "He's as strong as a gorilla, and as happy as a hippopotamus. He's all right, my dad." Dad appears (always in a robe and PJs) as a weightlifting, goofy gorilla and a frolicking hippo. At other times he's a brown plaid fish ("He can swim like a fish"), a placid-faced wrestler ("He can wrestle with giants"), and a tightrope walker (the tightrope looks remarkably like a clothesline, with Dad circumnavigating rainbow-colored socks).

Anthony Browne, award-winning author and illustrator of Willy's Pictures and many other witty picture books, pays bright and loving homage to that most remarkable of beings, the dad. Every illustration depicts the world as seen from the low height of the little boy narrator and through his starry-eyed gaze, as well. Sure, we might look at this man and see a slightly overweight fellow with five o'clock shadow and poor taste in nightwear, but to his son, this is Man. He is everything. And until that fateful day when the boy begins to roll his eyes at his dad's hopelessly embarrassing ways, Dad should just revel in the divine, unadulterated love of his child. (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter