When They Fight

Kathryn White

The highest compliment I can pay to the text of When They Fight (released in its native England as Good Day, Bad Day) is that it is indistinguishable from the language of the preschoolers at whom it's aimed. It is simple and powerful. It does exactly what it's supposed to do, and uses just enough words to do it. It is wonderful.

And yet it would not have the inarguable power it does were it not for Cliff Wright's fine, fine illustrations. A family of badgers is depicted in stark ambers, swirling and surreal. Even when our narrator's family calms down, the illustrations are still ominous and scary, if a bit more bucolic. The more I think about it, and I've thought about it a lot over the weeks since I first read it, this is really a subversive, twisted little book; White hands us what seems as if it's a happy ending, but there's no mistaking the bleakness with which the narrator looks to the future.

I love this book. I'm not sure how appropriate it is for most kids (and those who most need it, the ones in a situation, are almost guaranteed to have parents who won't buy it for them), but it's a distressingly beautiful read for adults.