How Hot Was It?

Martha Lamon is a freelance writer and researcher based in Huntsville,
Ontario.

Barclay’s delightful picture book provides the perfect antidote to a
hot, muggy summer day. The pleasant story, which features a typical
family in a suburban heat wave, is punctuated with rhythmic sentences
that amusingly describe the heat. The dad, for example, says it’s
“an icky, sticky, nerve-grating, tie-hating, wish-I’d-fixed-the-air,
grouchy-as-a-bear kind of hot.”

Everyone, including the dog, is low on energy. The young son lies in
bed listening to the electric buzz of cicadas outside, waiting for the
whisper of a breeze. Dad is grouchy. The dog is whining. Everything is
hot and sticky. At school the students sit limply at their desks in the
“sizzling, fizzling, record-breaking, belly-aching,
faces-red-as-beets, shorts-stuck-to-our-seats” heat. After school the
son plays in his backyard, then rejuvenates his dad with a spray from
the hose when he gets home from work—a spray that’s “a
pool-filling, pail-spilling, thirst-quenching, Dad-drenching,
ice-cold-lemonade, hammock-in-the-shade kind of cool.”

Donato’s bold, colourful illustrations impressively convey the
extremely hot summer days. The wordplay in the text will appeal to
adults as well as children. Highly recommended.