Book Review: Smelling Sunshine by Constance Anderson

Smelling Sunshine by Constance Anderson is a picturebook that focuses on the simple joys of doing laundry together. Children and their parents, in a few different locations, are handling the normal laundry day tasks and enjoying the time outside, and the time together.

Smelling Sunshine has one highpoint, the illustrations. Anderson uses a combination of collage and paint to make images that are simply wonderful. The sky and sea particularly seem to come alive, and you could almost feel the breeze in the air. The idea of showing children the joys of taking part in a regular chore, and that it is something universal, is well chosen and important. However, I felt that the choice of cultures to depict was fairly narrow, and that the prose was not half as interesting as the images.

I would recommend Smelling Sunshine for families that are trying to get their children to lend a hand on laundry day, or to show that everyone shares this basic task. However, it is not a book that I would search for or widely recommend.