<b>The magic of Ôwhat if’</b> What are your dreams, your aspirations? What would you like to do someday? Ask the narrator of Eileen Spinelli’s latest flight of imagination, <b>Someday</b>, and she would have no trouble coming up with an answer. To paint by the sea, excavate the bones of a T. rex, or take tea with the president might be lovely. In the eyes of a little girl, the possibilities are both beautiful and boundless.
Told in contrasting pages of someday and today, the main character gives a fresh and honest look at both dreams and realities. Someday I will dig for dinosaur bones. . . . I will be on the evening news but Today I am digging for coins under the sofa cushions . . . enough for a popsicle. Spinelli deftly enters the mind of a child and portrays a little girl who feels both disgust at her younger brother’s camel breath and delight at the baby owls perched on a branch outside her window. The young girl revels in her imagined power, snubbing extravagant offers to buy her art, and palpitating over the promise that fame or exotic travel might hold.
Spinelli, the author of more than 35 books including Sophie’s Masterpiece, pairs up with illustrator Rosie Winstead, whose whimsical collage is filled with detail and keeps the reader engaged with colorful two-page spreads throughout. Young children will undoubtedly notice the ubiquitous presence of the unnamed character’s cat on nearly every page.
Someday is a perfect book for children and grown-ups to read side-by-side, indulging in their own dreams, or as a prompt for young writers to pen their own thoughts for the future. The true beauty in Spinelli’s book however, is that no matter what tomorrow might hold, there is beauty to be celebrated in each and every day.
<i>Jennifer Robinson is a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland.</i>
