Just for Today

By Jan Phillips
Illustrator by Alison Bonds Shapiro

     Just for Today continues a trend begun by Rosemary Wells' popular Read to Your Bunny -- namely picture books designed to educate parents on being better parents. In Just for Today, the Mama and Papa in a friendly family of bears decide to take that day off and do nothing except play with the children. Just for today they will play, and make messes without cleaning them up, and eat popcorn and jelly beans. It's a sweet idea though I wonder how many moms can read it without muttering to themselves -- yup, and just for tomorrow I'll have non-stop cleaning to do. Some of the rhymes are a bit strained and make for odd looking illustrations, for example: Just for today…/we'll all be kids/And juggle jelly beans./We'll splash in puddles in the park/And fly up on the swings. Juggle jelly beans? I suppose it's better for your teeth than eating them, but the illustrations of two bears juggling jelly beans in the park while another played on the swings did seem a little strange. Overall, if you liked Read to Your Bunny, you may like this one. It certainly has some nice moments.