Big Red Lollipop and Silly Chicken

Big Red Lollipop
Silly Chicken
by Rukhsana Kahn

I stumbled on this children's book author when I was in our local public library.  I was looking for another book, and saw the last name "Khan," a common Muslim name in South Asia and other places.  The author is a Canadian of Pakistani descent.

GG really enjoys these books.  They're both well written and a bit humorous.  And both books have themes of sibling rivalry (in Silly Chicken, the rivalry is between a girl and a chicken).  The two books have different illustrators, and are set in different countries (Lollipop is set in the U.S. or Canada and Chicken in Pakistan). 

 In Lollipop, the school aged narrator, encounters some conflict with her mother who insists on sending her younger sister with her to a birthday party, which is against the social convention in her circle of friends.  The narrator is frustrated that her mother doesn't understand how birthday parties usually work, and at the end of the book she becomes a mediator between her mother and her younger sister to ensure that her younger sister doesn't make the same birthday party missteps.  The illustrations are beautiful, and the author explores the themes of sisterly resentment and feelings of alienation from not fitting in.


Silly Chicken is a humorous look at a girl's relationship with her mother's well-loved chicken.  The daughter thinks her mother, a widow, loves the chicken more than her.  The chicken comes to a sad end, and the roles then are reversed as its replacement (and offspring) becomes the adored pet of the girl, while her mother feels like the third wheel.  I prefer the illustrations in Lollipop, but this unusual story has some good laughs and is worth reading.

When It's Six O'Clock in San Franciso: A Trip Across Time Zones

When It's Six O'Clock in San Franciso:  A Trip Across Time Zones
by Cynthia Jaynes Omololu

Our dear friends, S & C, gave this to G for her 4th birthday.  It's a book about time zones, and in little vignettes, it shows how children in different cities around the world are spending their time at the same time.  So when it's 6:00 AM in San Francisco, it's the afternoon in London, dinner time in Lahore, and the middle of the night in Sydney.  The stories are just a snapshot of what each child is doing at the given time, but there's enough to make the narratives compelling.  G has become more aware of the abstract concept of time zones from our travel to India.  But this book shows a whole range of time zones from each continent (except Antarctica), and with a nice range of ethnic, gender and nationality diversity.  As she learns to tell time, the little clocks at the bottom of the page will be more interesting.  Already the map at the back of the book, showing the location of each story helps her to grasp the idea that concrete, real people live all over the world and are as fully alive as we are here (a concept that some adults have trouble grasping!).