So Much by Trish Cooke

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So Much was written by Trish Cooke.It was first published by Walker Books in 1994, London. This book was illustrated by Helen Oxenbury and it was held by British Library/ [1]   

Summary

Everybody loves the plump little baby--"SO MUCH!" When family members come to visit they can't resist squeezing him, kissing him, tossing him up on their shoulders, and dancing him around. His cousin wrestles with him, and his grandma says she wants to eat him up! A joyful read-aloud about a black family whose members delight in one another's company. [2]

Pros

One of the readers wrote his comment on book review sites, the reader named Darren Shoneye rated five stars to this book. He thought this book was amazing yet wonderful, this was multi-award-winning picture book! He had just read this book to a class of thirty year one pupils and they absolutely adored it. This was his first time reading this book, and it was such a lovely, fun and engaging story about a family gathering, with a strong emphasis on the amount of love and care, everybody wants to show this little baby. He had never come across this author before, so he decided to research her - Trish Cooke is an amazing author, who writes multicultural children's books. When he was at school he never got the chance to be showered with books that were written by someone that had parents with Dominican, West Indian descent, like Cooke. Despite being born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Cooke embraces her roots. She welcomes "Dominican patois" into her writing. This would have been so nice for him when he was at school, as his mother was from Jamaica, and she never really felt that this was something that could be celebrated, or even acknowledged, because it never seemed to exist in the National Curriculum in his day. He was glad to hear however, that this book is very popular when schools do 'Black History' Month. When he was at school his peers were not really exposed to people of Caribbean descent, so they would always laugh whenever they heard the accent. Exposing pupils to this early on will stop that kind of reaction happening. Hearing other accents should not be an alien aspect to their learning, in the same way that speaking an additional language is something that should be celebrated and not frowned upon. If anything it shows a deeper capacity of understanding! [3]

British Library wrote their opinion about this book, it was written on their site that Helen Oxenbury has moved away from her usual soft pencil and watercolour drawings for this book. She describes how she used ‘strong primary colours in gouache. The shapes were large and flat – the pages could not contain them. Happiness exploded all around. Helen never draws from photographs, always from life. The easy, natural poses and expressions of her characters are the brilliant result of this approach. [4] 

References