Caldecott Monday: A Sick Day for Amos McGee

[osprey_archer]

A Sick Day for Amos McGee is about Amos McGee, a zookeeper in an alternate reality where being a zookeeper means playing chess with the elephants and running races with the tortoises, who gets a cold and has to stay home from work one day. His animals friends are all worried about him, so they leave the zoo, take the bus to his apartment, where they entertain him and make him tea.

It's kind of striking how many picture books about zoos let the animals just up and walk out whenever they want to. (And not just picture books, or even just in America; the Soviet cartoon Cheburashka features an alligator whose day job is "zoo animal.") I suppose it's sort of in the same spirit as stories about toy shops where the toys come alive at night, where the fun comes from the reversal, except the reason toys don't actually wake up and have adventures (OR DO THEY) is that they're inanimate, whereas the reason animals can't leave the zoo is us. They're trapped because we locked them up.

Comments

[conuly]

Well, I mean, these are clearly sapient animals. They're not prisoners, they're guests.

[ladyherenya]

Children do enjoy stories where there's a reversal of normality. I wonder also if kids can identify with zoo animals' lack of independence, and so there's appeal in them being given greater freedom.

[osprey_archer]

I could see that. It may not be there on a conscious level (well, depending on the kid, it might), but there's definitely a parallel that kids might feel.