Sick Simon captures the essence of sick-and it’s fabulous

Dan Krall appeared on our radar a couple years ago with Oh, Nuts!, the story about squirrels competing for attention in a metropolitan zoo.  His next book, The Great Lollipop Caper about a lollipop trying to become as popular to adults as a caper was one of our favorite books of 2013.  We still read that book a couple times a week to our children and laugh.  Sick Simon is his latest and continues his streak of books that are as enjoyable for the parents to read as it is for the children to read or look at.

Sick Simon is geared to young readers who are 4-8.  It’s the story of Simon who is all set to have the best week ever. Sure he’s got a cold and his nose is running, but he’s not going to let that ruin his week.  He’s taking care of the class chinchilla, doing show and tell and going to the field trip to the zoo.  Unfortunately by Friday he’s the only kid left in school because day by day, the other kids were all getting his cold and going home.

On the way home on Friday the germs congratulate Simon for the ‘successful’ week.  He’s helped spread them far and wide across the school.  At first Simon doesn’t believe the germs, but after seeing how much of a nose running mess he’d become runs home to rest all weekend.  After resting, washing his hands and drinking plenty of liquids Simon returns to school to have the best week ever.

One thing that makes Sick Simon so entertaining is that every square inch of each page is packed with color.  There are some white spaces used to push the story along, but the color and variations on each page make them fun to turn and look at regardless of age.

The illustrations are fun, manic and capture the joy and messes of children very well.  When the germs make themselves known to Simon their illustration of the world that they could have if they stick together is Dali esque; if he were to paint about children and sickness.  Because it’s a book about sickness, there are lots of disgusting drawings of cartoon kids with runny noses.  Yuck.  However, consider it a learning tool because it will teach children that when you feel bad it is OK to stop and rest.

It’s also the little touches that make Sick Simon so much fun to read.  When Simon is resting his family is looking over him.  The germs are yelling about how they don’t stand a chance and his mother says, ‘is his nose talking?”

Our 5 year old is still learning about germs and how important it is to wash his hands.  This book is great for him because we’ve told him dozens, upon dozens of times that you can’t see the germs.  It was also a timely book because everyone, but him, got sick with the stomach flu recently.  Yuck.

Sick Simon also meets our great bedtime book criteria.  It’s short enough to read more than one time, has lots of great, big pictures and is big enough for multiple children to look at the pictures at the same time.

This is a fun book, despite its sick title and nature that will keep kids laughing and teach them the importance of washing their hands and resting without being preachy.