Give Me a Snickle!

In Alisha Sevigny’s board book, Give Me a Snickle!, young readers are invited to play with words as they hug, giggle, (“HIGGLE”), tickle and snuggle (“TUGGLE”) their way across the page. What Sevigny has put together is an enjoyable little book, perfect for cuddling with your wee ones, and for introducing the joy of language.

The photographs accompanying the text show a diverse range of babies and young children snuggling with loved ones. The depth of diversity is appreciable; from a child living with Down Syndrome, to persons of color, to siblings or grandparents providing snuggles, diversity has been attended to with attention and sensitivity.

While I enjoyed both the text and the photographs separately, they did not seem to work well as a whole. The zaniness of the text would be well-suited to a loose illustrative style that invites the reader into a world of language and laughter. The photographs, on the other hand, might have been better suited to a gentle down-to-earth text about families. While my children loved looking at all the people on these pages, if I read the words, they shut the book on my hands. A picture book is greater than the sum of its parts and this one, while sweet, would be stronger with a different illustration style.