What Dads Can't Do

by Douglas Wood, Doug Cushman (Illustrator)

Overview

There are lots of things that regular people can do but dads can't.
Dads can't cross the street without holding hands.
They can push, but can't swing.
When dads play hide-and-seek they always get found, but they have a hard time finding you.
Dads really need to be kissed good night at bedtime.
It's a wonder they make it through life at all!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689826207
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	05/01/2000
Edition description:	Repackage
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD460L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Douglas Wood is the author of A Quiet Place as well as the New York Times bestselling Can’t Do series. His books Old Turtle and Old Turtle and the Broken Truth were both international bestsellers. He lives in a cabin in the woods of Minnesota. A studied naturalist, Douglas shares his knowledge of nature as a wilderness guide. Visit him at DouglasWood.com.

Doug Cushman has illustrated over 130 children’s books, thirty or so of which he also wrote. His titles have been New York Times bestsellers and won awards including the Christopher Award, the California Young Readers Medal, and two Maryland Blue Crab Awards. Doug was also the recipient of a National Cartoonists Society Newspaper and Magazine Illustration Award, and he has displayed original art in France, Romania, and the United States. Doug enjoys mystery novels, playing slide guitar horribly, cooking, and traveling. He lives in St. Malo on the Brittany coast in France.

Editorial Reviews

Cushman (The Mystery of the Monkey's Maze, 1999, etc.) gives this sugary recitation of paternal imperatives an unusual slant by portraying child and dad as a single-parent family, but that's about all it has going for it. With breezy assurance the young narrator lists all of Dad's faults: he "can't cross the street without holding hands," can push a swing but not sit in one; loses at checkers and cards; needs "help" shaving, cooking, and reading; likes to give baths but can't help getting splashed, and so forth. The child, who, like his ingenuous-looking father, is portrayed as a green, iguana-like creature with hair and human clothing, finishes on a heavily reassuring note: Dad "never quits" (children of divorced or separated parents will certainly buy that) and "never ever stops loving you." Compared to the more natural give and take of Virginia Miller's George and Bartholomew stories (Be Gentle!, 1997, etc.), the father/son relationship here leaves no room for individuality, and comes across more as wishful thinking than any sort of achievable model. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews