Reading Level: 5-7 years
No Awards

A young boy visits his father in prison in this lovely, heartfelt picture-book from France. His complicated feelings about the man - his simultaneous love and admiration for him, and his anger and hatred of him, because of the pain he has caused his mother - are all explored. The narrative is both poetic and matter-of-fact, capturing the deprivations of imprisonment - the tiny window, the snide guard - and also the expansive power of emotion - the hope for a reunion outside prison, the warm feelings when the father laughs, the despair when he cries. At the conclusion of the book, the visit must come to an end, but the boy leaves with hope: he will return the next week with hazelnuts for his father...

Originally published as Les jours noisette, and translated into English by the Hong Kong-based publisher minedition, Hazelnut Days addresses a difficult topic, one not often seen in the picture-book world. There are exceptions of course - the marvelous Jacqueline Woodson's Visiting Day, for instance - but this is the first example of the form that I have seen in quite some time that is about a child with a parent in the prison system. I found it quite moving, and thought that text and image - the art is done by Zaü, the pen name of French artist André Langevin - worked seamlessly together to capture the emotional resonance of each scene. I think this is one I would recommend for an older audience, compared to your average picture-book, unless the child in question is actually experiencing what the narrator here is. ( )