Like many swimmers, a little boy hesitates to get wet right away, dipping a toe in the pool first and slowly climbing down the ladder. Sometimes, he notices, he likes to get wet quickly—and make a big splash—with a cannonball jump. The boy also remarks that he and his friends like getting “all-the-way wet,” but other swimmers just get “halfway wet.” While Carey Sookocheff’s deceptively simple picture book, Wet, starts off at a swimming pool, its main character considers wetness in a variety of ways.
Digitally enhanced childlike artwork with a simple color palette, set against open backgrounds, combines with spare text to form the boy’s descriptions. He notices how everything gets wet in the rain, except his cat, and that his fish is always wet, just like the floor at school. His hands get wet when he washes them, but his shirt gets wet when he dries them. As the boy jumps in a puddle, he knows that sometimes it’s fun to get wet, but when he slips and falls in the puddle, he also knows that sometimes it’s not.
Through these repetitions, comparisons, opposites and beginning sight words, Sookocheff delivers an engaging narrative for early readers. It’s a fantastic start for caregivers and children to make their own observations and comparisons and contrasts together. And just as the boy ends his day with a bath and goodnight kisses from his pets (all wet, of course), children will take comfort in their nighttime rituals—and a dry bed.
