A Little Patience
Michelle Mae
North Street Book Prize 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Children's Picture Book
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Michelle Mae's sweet and funny picture book A Little Patience employs young children's love of imaginary friends to teach emotional regulation skills for the whole family. The story is accompanied by Marta Taylor's illustrations in friendly shades of pink, green, and yellow.
Chase is a little boy cheetah who looks about five years old. His cheetah mom and baby sister make up the remainder of the on-page family. In an opening scene that'll be familiar to most parents, Mom is trying to keep a smile on her furry face while simultaneously stirring a pot, watching the baby in her high chair, and answering Chase's repeated question about when lunch will be ready. He protests, "Waiting is hard!" She urges him to "find patience" and he innocently asks, "Who is Patience?"
"Patience helps us wait for things, even when we want them right away," Mom explains. Little Chase decides that "Patience" is an imaginary friend, who proves quite helpful indeed! In subsequent scenes, Patience—depicted as a twin of Chase in lighter complementary colors—invisibly soothes him with fun activities and empathetic gestures when he's frustrated about a broken toy or a long line in the supermarket.
The kicker is that you're never too old to need this kind of emotional support. Mom experiences some road rage during the traffic jam on the way home from shopping, and her son reminds her gently that "Patience can be your friend too." The little mindfulness moment makes her laugh and acknowledge his wisdom, and all three characters and their equivalent-sized Patience friends end up hugging and singing together.
It reminded me of some of the best moments with my son, now 12, when I'm swearing about something trivial and he mischievously parrots back the corrections he usually hears from me. Gee, I guess I taught him something after all—parenting for the win! And what kid doesn't enjoy a friendly "gotcha" that turns the tables on the adults?
The illustrations were inviting and dynamic, with a lot of emotional warmth, though the figures' poses were sometimes awkward. I think kids will especially like the pictures of the supermarket with the various animal families. The text was isolated on facing pages that lacked visual interest. The font resembling Comic Sans was friendly and large, easy to read, with no typos, but the few lines on each white page looked marooned in all that space. This is not to say that there should have been more words in the story. It was the perfect length and pacing for its age group.
The paperback felt a little flimsy compared to the glossy hardcovers it competed with, but the cardstock covers held up well on rereading. A Little Patience won out over more professionally-produced books this year because of its egalitarian approach to parent-child communication. It's a book I would buy for our local Buddhist center's library or donate to the preschool my son used to attend. A favorite read-aloud in our household during those years was Anh's Anger by Gail Silver, very similar to A Little Patience in how it personifies an emotion and teaches us to befriend difficult parts of ourselves. I'll be thinking of this book next time I'm stuck in traffic!
Read an excerpt from A Little Patience (PDF)
Buy this book on Amazon.
