Who Will Pick Me Up when I Fall?

A young child with a working mother, who spends each day after school with someone else, needs Mommy's reassurance of love

Kindergarten-Grade 2-- Sarton refuses to get up and dressed in the morning. Confused by child-care plans and after-school classes, which differ each day of the week, she wants only to stay home. Her harried mother does not grasp the child's despair until the little girl packs a bag for every day of the week and then a bag for running away. Stopped short, her mother promises Sarton a day later in the week, when they can be together. The appealing, brightly hued watercolors belie the serious aspects of the text. Sarton is bewildered, overprogrammed, and unhappy; her mother is oblivious to the lack of continuity in her daughter's life. When realization comes, she promises a temporary solution. Although economic realities may force single parents into a patchwork of child care, Sarton's gym, dancing, and swimming lessons appear to put her in a different category, and readers will yearn to see her life streamlined. This is not a reassuring story. --Gail C. Ross, Baltimore County Public Library
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Weary of the confusion of being picked up by someone different every day (if it's Tuesday, ``Jos‚'s daddy takes us swimming...Then Ann meets me''), Sarton hides out at home, planning to run away on Friday. Fortunately, Mom is sufficiently in tune to find out what's bothering her, and after the two agree that they'd both like to escape--together--sometime soon, Sarton is happily out the door. Trivas's freely rendered watercolors nicely extend the story's humorous but sympathetic picture of the stresses on a contemporary child and her working parent. (Picture book. 4-7) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.