Pat-a-Cake Baby

‘I’m a cookie baby/a pat-a-cake baby’, a jaunty jingle picks up the traditional nursery rhyme familiar to many. It sets the tone for this latest collaboration between mother and daughter, Joyce and Polly Dunbar. It is a lovely confection designed to be read aloud. Joyce Dunbar is one of the best creators of picture book text; here she is on top form with rhyming, rhythmic words that are full of wonderful alliteration and onomatopoeia – ‘glitzy’, ‘mutter mutter’, ‘flitter flotter’. Picture books are a route through which the youngest can be exposed to the richest vocabulary, where a sense of poetry can be awakened and this is a picture book that delivers. But a picture book is – or should be – a partnership; the illustrations must also work. Polly Dunbar rises to the challenge filling the spacious double-page spreads with colour, not dramatic tones, but rich mellow washes that emphasise the nursery appeal. Her jolly babies bounce across the pages with not a tantrum in sight, but like Mickey in Sendak’s Night Kitchen, ensure that there is cake at the end. This is a book that demands to be picked up, the glitter on the cover – just a little – attracting the attention, but not used for anything else; texture is all in the colour, the design, the marriage of text and image. A very satisfying dish that should be in classrooms and nurseries everywhere.