A Fair Trade Book
Title: Even If I Did
Something Awful
Author: Barbara Shook Hazen
Author's web site: http://www.barbarashookhazen.com/
Date: 1981
Publisher: Atheneum
ISBN: 0-689-30843-4
Length: pages not numbered, but 28 pages of picture-book
story
Illustrations: drawings by Nancy Kincade
Quote: “Mommy, do you love me?”
The speaker is a little girl who has just thrown a ball,
indoors, and knocked a vase off the mantelpiece. By way of a confession she’s
asking if her mother would still love her if she’d done other things…“even if
you gave the baby away,” the mother assures her, wondering what the kid’s done
this time.
As with most picture books, pictures are a large part of
this one’s charm. The drawings are shaded not colored; there’s a bath scene
that has to have been inspired by Kay Thompson’s Eloise
(not on the cover of the paperback, which is what I have, but shown on the hardcover edition, pictured above). If you want to time-travel back to 1981, the fashionable
clothes and furniture in these pictures will help.
(not on the cover of the paperback, which is what I have, but shown on the hardcover edition, pictured above). If you want to time-travel back to 1981, the fashionable
clothes and furniture in these pictures will help.
There’s not much plot about Even If I Did Something Awful, no suspense whatsoever. If a hug
could be a book, this is the book it could be (and the mother and child hug in
the last picture). I’ve not tested it, but I’m guessing it was meant to be read
to small children before bed. For that purpose it's won a Christopher Award.
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