Nanette’s Baguette

It’s a big day. For the first time, Nanette is sent to Juliette the baker to get the baguette. Here she is with her mum in the kitchenette. And is she pleased? You bet! On the way home, the baguette is warm and smells wonderful. There is a lot of it. And then there is less of it. And then there is none of it. ‘Nanette begins to fret. Will mum be upset? Will mum regret she let Nanette get the baguette?’ Mo Willems orchestrates this tale and its excruciatingly inventive mono-rhymes brilliantly. His wacky cardboard and paper collage illustrations conjure up a cartoon French village inhabited by frog-like people with huge eyes. Nanette’s gestures of love for the baguette and regret at its passing are as gloriously over-the-top Gallic as you could wish, and the drama is accompanied by wonderful exclamatory pictorial sound effects: Krack! as the baguette is broken open; And Kaboom! as thunderclouds gather over guilty Nanette, ‘wet with no baguette.’ The scene in which distraught Nanette owns up to mum, and her face goes through a series of expressions from plain rueful to sweaty panic, is both gloriously funny and full of understanding for her situation. It’s a predicament many children will recognise or sympathise with and it’s certainly ‘a day Nanette won’t soon forget!’