Chil­dren’s

Just Like Mama

Lesléa New­man; Julia Gor­ton, illus.

  • Review
By – August 30, 2011

Just Like Mama is an attrac­tive pic­ture book that high­lights the love between a moth­er and her young daugh­ter. In the daughter’s eyes, her moth­er does every­thing per­fect­ly— from cook­ing to play­ing to sim­ply lov­ing. Each page illus­trates a short rhymed verse about the course of the young girl’s day, end­ing with state­ments such as, Nobody cooks break­fast just like Mama”, or Nobody plays ball just like Mama”. Busy Mama hosts tea par­ties, makes pan­cakes, and lov­ing­ly tucks her lit­tle one into bed at night. The last two-page spread sweet­ly shows the child’s grat­i­tude as the girl hap­pi­ly brings Mama break­fast in bed the next morn­ing. The joy­ous final words are illus­trat­ed with red cap­i­tal let­ters with­in a heart shape: Nobody loves mama just like me!” The illus­tra­tions are bright, bold, large and engag­ing. Author Leslea New­man has writ­ten a num­ber of Jew­ish-themed children’s books, how­ev­er this one has no par­tic­u­lar Jew­ish con­tent. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 4 – 7

Bar­bara Sil­ver­man had an M.L.S. from Texas Woman’s Uni­ver­si­ty. She worked as a children’s librar­i­an at the Cor­pus Christi Pub­lic Libraries and at the Cor­pus Christi ISD before retir­ing. She worked as a vol­un­teer at the Astor Juda­ic Library of the Lawrence Fam­i­ly JCC in La Jol­la, CA. Sad­ly, Bar­bara passed away is 2012.

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