The Brunch Shift by Adrienne Thurman, Mags DeRoma
ISBN: 0593808177
Genres: Family Life
Format: Picture Book Fiction
Goodreads

Saturdays may evoke warm thoughts of sleeping in, playing with friends, relaxing… but not for our protagonist. She tags along every week with her mother, who “can’t afford to miss” working the brunch shift. We follow the unnamed narrator as she and Mama take the early morning crosstown bus, spend the day at the diner, run an errand, and make their way back home after a long day. At the diner they are overseen by Mr. Wong, who is neither a complete villain nor an ally, interrupting fun to keep Mama on task, but also slipping our narrator a stack of blueberry pancakes “just the way I like it.” Throughout the day, Mama leans into imaginative play, teeing the pair up to be brave knights on the bus, art detectives catching thieves at break time, gold miners while doing dishes, Olympic sprinters rushing to the bank after work, and astronauts getting a rocket fuel snack on the way home. Despite all the fun that Mama creates, our protagonist ends the day tired and wishing that she could have “somebody else’s Saturday.” But Mama has one last surprise on the way home to make this day feel special.

Mags DeRoma’s mixed media illustrations have a childlike quality that the effectively parallel the mix of imagination and realism in Thurman’s text. Both visually and thematically, this would be a great pair with Oge Mora’s Saturday, another story of the precious time a daughter and her working mother share.

Reviewed by Carolyn Gallmeyer, Lithgow Public Library, Augusta ME