I picked up Henry Wants More! because I had been impressed by Brooke Boyton Hughes works where she was both author and illustrator. I was curious what she would be like illustrating someone else’s work. In other words, I knew nothing about Linda Ashman’s work, and had heard nothing about Henry Wants More!
So, this was a genuine exploration, though when I pulled it off the shelf at my local library, they had already tagged it with a sticker tagging it as written for the “very young.”
I’m less sure. Yes, Henry’s a toddler, but family interactions shown are fairly complex, documenting the family’s attempt to deal with a youngster who always, always wants more. The journey from the early play, when Henry’s getting tossed into the air, to Henry falling—finally!—asleep is smooth and logical. It makes good sense.
But, as I might have expected, it is Hughes’s illustrations that really give this book its spark. The page designs are a cut above most books, using lines, body position, and character/group placement on the page to pull focus with precision. They aren’t as haunting as the images in Hughes’ own work, but they—along with the oversized repetitions of “More!”—make this come to life.
Henry Wants More! is not great, but it is good, and it is easy to imagine families find it both pleasant and useful as a way to express and externalize the stresses they might be going through with new siblings.
