My Dad

May 17, 2021
A curly-haired, brown-skinned child celebrates their bespectacled father’s everyday actions, including baking, grocery shopping, and giving the child a bath, in this sweetly rhyming picture book. From the first-person perspective, Quinn surveys activities that parent and child participate in together, lightly skimming through the seasons with beach visits, rainy walks, and sledding: “If it rains, we splash through puddles,/ stomp through leaves of gold and red.” Ruiz illustrates in semitranslucent layers of color, offering shifting, seasonally appropriate color palettes. Particularly effective are reflections of the child’s imagination, such as a spread of father and child imagining “lots of pirate ships/ sailing in the bath,” amid a fluid spread of blue-green waves and miniature boats. A kind narrative that shows appreciation for one parent-child relationship’s quotidian moments. Ages 4–7.