Richie's Picks: NO! by David McPhail, Roaring Brook, March 2009, 40p.,
ISBN: 978-1-59643-288-8
"...and the big fat bird said I'M GOING TO EAT YOU UP
and the big fat worm said OH NO YOU'RE NOT
and the big fat bird said OH YES I AM
and the worm said NO..."
-- from THE BIG FAT WORM by Nancy Van Laan and Marisabina Russo, ill.,
Knopf, 1987.
I used THE BIG FAT WORM the other day during my presentation to young
students at Sonoma State University's Summer Reading Academy. I discovered the
book at the library when it was first published, back in my early days as
a preschool director. Over those years, it was a story I had kids act out
well over a thousand times. When it comes to acting, it is pretty easy to
get quartets of little kids as young as two or three years old to come
take their turns up in front of their school mates, pretending to be the big
fat worm, bird, cat, or dog, and using their loudest voices to tell each
other NO!
Saying NO! -- whether it is to one's peers, parents, other authority
figures, or to the government -- is one of those essential skills that are best
learned sooner rather than later. (Just ask Melinda Sordino.) Sure, it is
so frustrating as a parent or teacher to be on the receiving end of that
NO! when it feels like it is being given in response to a legitimate
request. But in the long run, it is such a relief and so worth it -- being, of
course, that you cannot always be there to protect them -- to know that your
kids know perfectly well how to forcefully say NO!
In a picture book with exactly three words of dialogue -- the same
two-letter word repeated three times -- David McPhail's young character causes the
world to do a one-eighty through his assertive use of the word "NO!"
Leading up to the title page, McPhail's young boy character is writing a
letter to the President, licking the envelope, and sticking on a stamp. As
he leaves home and traverses the town on the way to the mailbox, he
witnesses jets bombing a nearby village, tanks decimating part of the
neighborhood through which he is walking, faceless troops kicking in the door of
an
apartment in which a mother and her children are situated, and a policeman
and police dog charging after a man who has defaced a poster of the
President. When the young boy finally arrives at the mailbox, there is a big boy
leaning against it who knocks off the young boy's cap, grabs him by the
collar, and prepares to wallop him. It is then that the young boy has had it.
NO!
By saying NO! to the bully, everything is changed. As the young boy
retraces his steps heading homeward with the reformed bully at his heels, we see
the police dog licking the poster defacer's face, the troops giving
presents to the mom and her children, one of the tanks providing horsepower for a
plow, and one of the jet bombers dropping a parachute that holds a bicycle
onto which the young boy and the reformed bully mount and upon which they
ride away.
Ten years ago David McPhail's picture book MOLE MUSIC became one of my
all-time favorites. NO! makes for a great companion to MOLE MUSIC. Both
provide calls for sanity and simple directions for children (and adults) on how
to make the world a better place.
And be sure not to miss the very end of the story, when we get to read
what the young boy has actually written to the President.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks
_http://www.librarything.com/catalog/richiespicks_
(http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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