What's So Bad about Being an Only Child?

Best, Cari. What's So Bad About Being An Only Child? Pictures by Sophie Blackall. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007. Rosemary's parents give her six names, "Rosemary Emma Angela Lynette Isabel Iris" because they do not want to offend their close relatives. Rosemary is a very happy child because "She was the center of attention and the object of affection." However, she suffers when her relatives try to feed her, read to her, or play with her all at the same time, "Being an only child is hard work". Rosemary's friends have brothers and sisters and they all look like they are having fun even when they argue but when Rosemary complains to her parents, they respond, "What's so bad about being an only child?" Rosemary starts "collecting only things--like a sock, a button, the last cookie on the plate" etc. Rosemary's eventual solution to her situation is cute and satisfying. The illustrations are charming depictions of family life. One sweet and colorful illustration shows Rosemary sitting on a seesaw, her end on the ground while her stuffed bear bounces on the other. A double-spread shows Rosemary's dad holding a camera and creeping behind her diaper- clad body while pictures on the room wall playfully portray: her mother making a face as her daughter laughs, her father holding his throbbing finger and smiling at the camera after his daughter has perhaps bitten him and an adult making a face while Rosemary laughs. Another double-spread shows Rosemary's parents each holding her by a hand as her mother feeds her an ice cream cone, "While her mother held one hand, her father held the other, and Rosemary had no hand left to hold her ice cream or fly her kite or even blow her nose." A sweet take on an increasingly common family situation so pair with Hoberman's "One of Each" (Little, Brown 1997) for some fun at story time