cover image When You’re Feeling Sick

When You’re Feeling Sick

Coy Bowles, illus. by Andy Elkerton. Doubleday, $12.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-55286-1

Zac Brown Band guitarist Bowles (Amy Giggles) suggests that laughter is the best medicine when one is ill, serving up goofball scenarios and strained rhymes in an attempt to get under-the-weather children to crack a smile. The book mostly consists of a litany of things not to do when feeling sick, e.g. “Don’t pour chicken noodle soup over your head./ It’s made for your mouth and your belly instead” and “Don’t be afraid of needles or your nurse/ She’s not a wicked witch with a broom and curse./ (Nurses are the sweetest people in the whole universe!).” Elkerton (How to Catch an Elf) dutifully presents each scene in bold digital cartoons, even when they turn truly ridiculous (as when a blue-haired boy in pajamas soars through the night sky with toes that have been turned into balloons), but genuine laughs are few. Most of Bowles’s suggestions, such as making a “sickness monster face” or singing a Sickness Song to chase germs away, are unlikely to offer much comfort to ailing kids. Ages 3–7. Illustrator’s agency: Shannon Associates. (Jan.)