What Comes Next? Before And After by Jean Jullien

Who doesn't want to know what comes next?

Start with a bunch of dry spaghetti. What comes after that steaming pot? A big, steaming plate of pasta!

What comes after a head of dirty, disheveled hair? (Hopefully?) A comely coiffure!

What comes after a freshly-laid egg? A chicken! (Okay, maybe a baby alligator or a tadpole or an ostrich. ) You get the idea.

What comes after a pale sunbather? A painful sunburn (unless you use plenty of sunscreen, of course).

What comes after the front end of a dachshund? The END.

Jean Jullien's latest, Before & After (Phaidon Books, 2017) cheerfully takes on the concept of cause and effect, with a little lesson on predicting outcomes with each page turn. As she did in her hit book, This Is Not a Book (see review here,) author-illustrator Jullien uses thick blackline drawings in comic faux naif style and cleverly placed page turns in a little book that offers preschoolers a chance to guess what comes next.

The author even offers what happens in between the beginning and the end, as a dad and boy board a roller coast, ride with hands in air bravely during the first big drop, and finish the ride with Dad, dazed and windblown and boy with a great big smile. Jullien even offers a final joke, with her back cover showing what happens after that double-dip ice cream cone shown on the front cover, with her trademark little dachshund greedily lapping up the dropped scoop of strawberry ice cream. This one is a little tour de force of a concept book that offers learning and fun with each page turn.