The Kiddie Table

Description

At every Thanksgiving there are two tables the kiddie table and the adult table. So why in the world would an 8-year-old girl be stuck at the kiddie table She is NOT a baby. She is NOT a toddler. She is a grown-up She can do two-digit multiplication and knows how to cut her own food. She deserves to be at the adult table And after an empowered speech and mini-breakdown the girl is moved to the adult table. Growing up is never easy and author Colleen Madden brilliantly tackles that issue in this delightful picture book.

The fourth girl in a family of 8 children, Colleen Madden made it through childhood pretending to be a space princess with a wookie sidekick and drawing in her cardboard box art studio. Colleen spent some time acting and training at The Second City in Chicago, then went on to graduate from a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, with a contract major in illustration and English literature. She is currently residing in the Philadelphia area, with her writer-husband, and their 2 sons. She has illustrated for many different kinds of clients and is the recipient of an International Greeting Card Louie Award. When not illustrating, Colleen can be found long distance running, making her boys giggle, and eating lots and lots of sushi.

Colleen Madden's brought this common holiday dilemma to the fore with her humorous take on sitting at The Kiddie Table, a fate worse than death for tweens or anyone for that matter who feels they should be seated with the adults. . . .The cover alone made me want to dive in. The emotional build up of the art flows a bit better than the prose, but the essence of the story, about self-advocacy and that awkward in-between age rings true and something many children will relate to.-- "Good Reads with Ronna" Thanksgiving dinner is fraught with potential for humiliation. Roiling with indignation, an 8-year-old flower- and sequin-bedecked girl fumes at being made to sit with babies and toddlers at a separate holiday table laden with sippy cups, plastic dinnerware, and diners who carouse with their dishes and gloppy food. . . .The colorful, energetic illustrations, embellished with emphatic display types that match the irate white girl's protests, are expressive and feature secondary characters of diverse skin tones, ages, and sizes...-- "Kirkus Revivews"