Snyder, Dianne and Egolf, Robert L. The boy of the three-year nap. Illustrated by Allen Say. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988. ISBN: 0-395-44090-4.
Author Website: None
Illustrator Website: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/allensay/
Media: Watercolor
Awards: Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, 1988. Caldecott Honor, 1989. A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book, 1989.
Use of Simile: (p. 6) “her head bobbed up and down, up and down, like the heads of the birds hunting for fish.” (p. 6) “and as healthy as a mother.” (p. 7) “He was a lazy as a rich man’s cat.” (p. 10) “roof leaks like a basket.” (p. 10) “hat like a priest wears.” (p. 20) “His face is as black as coal and as fierce as a warrior’s.” (p. 26) “Taro’s mother tossed her head like a cormorant that has caught a large fish.”
Use of Repetition: (p. 6) “her head bobbed up and down, up and down, like the heads of the birds hunting for fish.” (p. 7) “All he did was eat and sleep, sleep and eat.”
Annotation: A lazy boy who spends his days napping plots to marry the daughter of a wealthy neighbor. The boy’s mother simultaneously plots to get her son a job.
Personal Reaction: This retelling of a Japanese folktale is filled with humor and language that promotes easy visualization. I enjoyed the parallel scheming of Taro and his mother, accentuated by Say’s artwork. While Taro is plotting to marry a rich neighbor’s daughter, Taro’s mother is plotting to get her son a job and Say captures it all in the characters’ facial expressions and body language. Say was apprenticed to a famous cartoonist at the age of twelve and this experience clearly taught him how to tell a comical story through illustration. The watercolor illustrations on pages 11 and 13 show just how annoyed Taro’s mother is by her son’s laziness. On page 28, the story ends as Taro’s mother trumps her son with her cleverness, “Ha! Do you think you are the only one who makes plans?” Say illustrates the ending with a drawing of a smug-faced mother and Taro with a look of exasperation on his face.
