Doings with Dad! Side by Side by Chris Raschka

What do dads do? Almost anything and everything!

How do they do it? With their kids--they do it...

SIDE BY SIDE!

Dads fly kites with daughters, and sunbathe with them side by side at the beach. They play horsie for their little equestriennes and jester to their little princesses.

Dads make like a crane for boys that play cargo. They teach little lads to play board games. Their laps can be pillows for those same sleeping laddies.

Dads can be teachers for catching fish, or inefficient learners of how to jump rope, as one comic double-page spread shows a daddy with feet hopelessly tangled in daughter's rope as she demonstrates proper form.

In the Caldecott author-illustrator Chris Raschka's latest salute to fatherhood, Side by Side : A Celebration of Dads from two-time Caldecott Medal Winner (Phaidon Press,2019), his  faux naif-style illustrations show different dad-and-child combinations having all kinds of fun side by side in a sweet and simple salute to what daddies do. School Library Journal's starred review says, "Raschka amazes by conveying profound emotion in a simple, unpretentious way."

Just Right for the Job! Little Big Girl by Claire Keane

Matisse was a little girl in a big world.

And Matisse knows her way around her world. She brushes her "little" teeth and puts on her own little clothes--and shoes. She fastens herself into her car seat and heads out into the big city with her mom.

With her clearly "expecting" mom right behind her, she leads the way through the giant supermarket and the big box stores where they shop, as well as the fun places they visit, like the aquarium where big sharks swim right over her head. Back home she builds a playhouse and playground with sofa cushions, and even naps happily there.

Life is good. But then one day . . .

Little Matisse met someone even littler than her.

He had little fingers

and little toes ...

Even his yawns are SO little. His shirts are super small, and so are his tiny shoes.

Suddenly Matisse sees that she is not little, not really little, compared to her baby brother. Not at all.

She is even big enough to choose the baby's little clothes and put his little shoes on his little feet and read his little books to him.

Matisse realizes that what she is is a Big Sister, in Claire Keane's Little Big Girl (Dial Books 2016). Author Keane looks mostly on the bright side of having a new baby at home, setting the stage slyly with hints of the coming event around the house for Matisse's realization of her promotion to a new family status. There are plenty of good books about the trials and tribulations of sibling-hood, but this book is just right for reading just before the new baby comes.

The granddaughter of Bil Keane, creator of the iconic Family Circus cartoons, artist Keane shares his curved lines and sense of movement as well as the ability to convey the warmth of family life in her digital drawings that make this one special. "Simple in composition but bold and expressive in its use of line and splashes of color," School Library Journal calls this one "a charming, child-focused celebration of becoming an older sibling."

Sing along with Ziggy: I Love You, Too! by Ziggy Marley

FROM THE FIRST TIME THAT I SAW YOU

I KNEW THAT IT WAS TRUE.

THERE'LL BE A LIFELONG TIME TO SPEND

AROUND THE CORNER, AROUND THE BEND.

If your dad is Ziggy Marley, Emmy and Grammy Award winner, and he starts improvising a song in the kitchen, just for you, you'd probably do what Ziggy's three-year-old daughter did--sing right back at him!

I LOVE, YOU TOO, I LOVE YOU, TOO!

I LOVE YOU, TOO, I LOVE YOU, TOO!

I LOVE YOU!

From that little dinette duet grew a song, a bouncy, happy song about love between parent and child, grandparent and child, and between anyone and everyone.

With Ziggy's eight verses and his daughter's easy refrain, a song was born, and from that song comes the book, illustrated by Ag Jatkowska. with a variety of kids, family members, neighbors, and anyone who comes by, with lizards climbing trees, fish swimming through the seas, hives of bees, and worms who don't do much but dig, all in happy scenes of all sorts of folks enjoying each other's company. All that Marley's I Love You Too! (Tuff Gong, 2014), requires is a big red heart on the cover to qualify for the theme song of this year's Valentine's Day parade.

Just in case you can't improvise the rest of the lyrics on your own, you can turn to YouTube to get you singing along with the Marleys (Ziggy, Rita, and Cedella), live to a catchy Caribbean beat, right here.