When I Grow Up…

PreS-Gr 1—When Teacher Ester asks the students, "Who do you want to be like when you grow up?," each youngster responds by describing a parent's desirable physical trait. But Johnny isn't like his parents in physical form—he's a duck, and his parents are pigs. He's embarrassed to admit that his tail isn't like Mom's and his legs aren't like Dad's, but he has no trouble talking about the ways he wants to be like them. The students' responses (antlers like Dad's, a neck like Mom's) don't quite correspond grammatically to the opening question, but this isn't likely to deter children's enthusiasm for the story. In the end, readers see that some of the students also live in nontraditional family arrangements. Lively illustrations in mixed media, including cut-paper images, portray the joys children feel when they think of their families. The endpapers include images of each student, along with the numbers one through seven repeated in diagonal rows, offering an additional learning activity.