A Tale of Two Mommies
Three multicultural children spend a day at the beach, building sand castles, eating ice-cream, and swimming—all while quizzing one member of the group about his life with two mommies. Two-page spreads alternate between questions and answers. The rhyming questions come two at a time, asking which mother assumes responsibility for all manner of parental tasks: “Who empties your pockets at the end of the day? Who teaches you the polite thing to say?” The similarly rhyming responses follow, and the answers are appropriately mixed; some situations involve one mom (either Mommy or Momma), some both (for all important things, like bandaging a scraped knee), and some neither (snakes, it seems, are enjoyed solely by our young protagonist). The story is not without purpose, but Blanc’s playful computer-drawn illustrations add warmth and substance, tempering the weight of the message with a joyful spirit. An endnote states that all net profits will be donated to charitable organizations. Preschool-Kindergarten. --Thom Barthelmess