If Only
Author & Illustrator: Mies Van Hout
Pajama Press
Ages 4-8
The grass isn’t actually greener on the other side of the gate.
Who among us hasn’t wanted to be someone, or something else, if only for a day? The child in If Only wishes to be a butterfly, so she can fly, not realizing that the butterfly wishes it were a stick insect, and the stick insect wishes it were a whirligig beetle….and so on, and so on, until the last insect wishes it were a child so it could do all the things children do.
“The whirligig beetle thought,
If only I were a firefly.
Then I’d never be scared of the dark.”
Gorgeously illustrated with colorful collages in the tradition of Eric Carle (down to the entomophilia! Look. It. Up.), If Only is a sweet book with an important moral at its core: The grass isn’t actually greener on the other side of the gate.
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More books for this Age Group can be found here.
My thanks to Pajama Press for providing a Review Copy of this book. All opinions provided herein are my own.
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