Tippy and the Night Parade by Lilli Carré

This one misses the mark on both counts. (Picture book. Mixed-race children certainly deserve mirror books, but they also deserve excellent text and illustrations.

The rhyming verse that conveys her self-celebration is often clumsy and forced, resulting in a poorly written, plotless story for which the internal illustrations fall far short of the quality of the cover image. Lilly describes how hurtful racial microaggressions can be by recalling questions others ask her like “What are you?” She remains resilient and says that even though her skin and hair make her different, “the way that I look / Is not all I’m about.” But she spends so much time talking about her appearance that this may be hard for readers to believe. This array smacks of tokenism, since the protagonist focuses only on self-promotion, leaving no room for the friends’ character development.

Her five friends present black, Asian, white (one blonde, one redheaded), and brown (this last uses a wheelchair). Throughout the rhyming narrative, accompanied by cartoonish digital illustrations, Lilly brags on her dark skin (that isn’t very), “frizzy, wild” hair, eyebrows, intellect, and more. Protagonist Lilly appears on the cover, and her voluminous curly, twirly hair fills the image. This tan-skinned, freckle-faced narrator extols her own virtues while describing the challenges of being of mixed race. Occasional sound effects and comments in dialogue balloons furnish the text for her nightly ramble.Ī dreamy, slightly more visually sophisticated alternative to Peggy Rathmann’s Good Night, Gorilla (1994). Dressed in a comfy gown and striped socks, Tippy strolls, climbs and drifts in smiling slumber through a succession of flat, sometimes-silhouetted scenes done in restful blues and grays. Interactions among the animals following her add small subplots and side actions: A frog pursues a bumblebee that’s always just out of tongue’s reach a little mole falls in love with a bear that does not reciprocate.

Along the way, she unconsciously collects a train of creatures, from a bee to a bear, that all make a new mess for her mother to discover in the morning. When her annoyed mom wonders how her room came to be such a mess, Tippy can only shrug and speculate: “Maybe last night I walked out the door….” In a re-enactment that is also a new adventure, she passes over a dock, through a misty wood, down a deep hole, through a cactus patch and so back home. A sleepwalking child picks up an animal entourage-every night-in this winsome, circular debut.

Tippy and the Night Parade by Lilli Carré