27 April 2017 WHERE ARE YOU? by Sarah Williamson, Knopf, June 2017, 32p., ISBN: 978-1-5247-0063-8

“Sailing on the wind in a milk white gown

Dropping circle stones on a sun dial

Playing hide and seek with the ghosts of dawn

Waiting for a smile from a sun child”

--from “Moonchild” King Crimson (1969)

Through our peekaboo games with them, infants learn about object permanence:

“Even before they respond to a tickle, most babies will laugh at peekaboo. It's their first ‘joke.’ They are reacting to a sequence of events that begins with the presence of a familiar, comforting face. Then, suddenly, the face disappears, and you can read in the baby's expression momentary puzzlement and alarm. When the face suddenly reappears, everything is orderly in the baby's world again. Anxiety is banished, and the baby reacts with her very first laugh.”

-- from “The Peekaboo Paradox” Washington Post, 1/22/06

Slightly older children can spend a lot of time playing more sophisticated versions of peekaboo, taking turns springing out from beneath bedcovers or from behind a closet door, repeatedly pretend-scaring a playmate or a willing grown-up accomplice.

Playing hide and seek teaches preschoolers and young school age children problem solving, the concept of volume (can someone fit in that much space?), and social skills. In happy memories more than a half-century old, I still recall the smell of creosote and the hum from the powerlines that reverberated through the telephone pole that I’d lean against, my eyes hidden against my forearm, counting to one-hundred as the neighborhood kids all scattered behind fences, cars, and bushes.

These play experiences are memorable, fulfilling, and connected to our development. It’s not surprising that the pleasure can readily carry over to a well-executed picture book in which readers seek to spot hiding characters.

One such book, WHERE ARE YOU? by Sarah Williamson, is a joyful and charming story featuring a green worm that is on the trail of a pink worm. The choice of worms as the characters is perfect for having the pink worm disguise itself in ways that we can only imagine hiding ourselves. With each page turn, the worms’ disguises are just sufficiently challenging to spot that three year-olds will excitedly and proudly point them out.

The story is set in a park. Sarah Williamson’s two-dimensional gouache illustrations take the worms scurrying through tall grass and pond, sandbox and flower beds. The pink worm becomes the mast on a toy sailboat (amidst a dozen colorful toy boats). Then away from the boat and under a lily pad, with its head sticking out in just the right way to make it look like a snail. The wormy duo avoid potential danger as they quietly slip past a bird. Reaching a sandbox full of toys, the pink worm dons a yellow hardhat and drives a green toy tractor. Then, having slid into a plane, the pink worm stretches from cockpit to the rear of the plane, making it look as if all the windows have pink pull-down shades.

For me, the story’s highlight involves the pink worm stretching itself halfway around the rim of a bicycle that a man is riding in the park. Now heading up an impromptu parade, the worm and the bike man are followed by a woman bicyclist with a dog in her basket, then the green worm in a carriage, and a young person on a skateboard.

Beginning with the endpapers, which provide an overview of the park, there is left-to-right movement on virtually every page. This left-to-right movement halts when the pair of worms wind their way upward to the top of an ornate light post and, at the end, the green worm, reaching the apex of the light fixture, catches up to the smiling pink worm who is hanging down from a tree. After concluding the story, the endpapers provide an overview of where the worms have been, and will encourage rereading (and subsequent hiding games).

Richie Partington, MLIS

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