“Before Harry was born, there was ME! Now there’s me. And Harry.” Pity the poor narrator—beleaguered, disillusioned, ignored, and aggrieved—a former only child for whom life used to be bliss. Harry, a winsome and contented diaper-clad baby, takes an uninvited bite of his big brother’s banana; spits up smelly, yucky, cheesy stuff all over him; and, worst of all, has taken over Grandma’s lap. The wild-eyed narrator, his fists clenched, black curls akimbo, has had it. “Throw Harry in the trash!” he suggests darkly, and “Flush Harry down the toilet!” and, watching Harry nestle contentedly in Grandma’s loving arms, mutters dejectedly, “Put Harry back inside Mommy.” After a night of listening to the screaming baby, the enraged boy screams, too: “Mail Harry to the moon!” But when he wakes up in the morning and there’s no screaming, babbling, burping Harry, the boy gets worried and starts searching the trash, the toilet, and Mommy’s belly. What if Mommy and Daddy really did mail baby Harry to the moon? he worries guiltily. Off he flies to the moon in his laundry basket rocket ship, a metal spaghetti strainer akimbo on his head, to rescue the little tyke.

How the big brother moves through his many stages of grief, from anger to true acceptance, will speak especially to older siblings who have lived this story firsthand. The way the boy channels his roiling emotions and comes to terms with his sense of displacement may put you in mind of another angry kid who tames his demons—Max in Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. Ask your kids how they came to accept and embrace their own siblings.


Themes: BABIES. BROTHERS AND SISTERS. EMOTIONS. SIBLING RIVALRY.