the smeds and the smoos by julia donaldson

Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol. Rip-roaring verse but painfully simplistic messaging. Moreover, the notion that interracial couples and mixed-race offspring-a purple Smed/Smoo baby-are a solution for racism is false and places an unfair burden on mixed-race readers. This unsubtle metaphor for fixing racism and xenophobia ignores real-world power imbalances: The Smeds and Smoos may distrust one another, but they share equal status.

(Grandfather Sned had forgotten to lock it.) / Bill pressed the button, and Janet steered… // …When their families woke, they had both disappeared!” A multiplanet search leads to reconciliation and integration. They clambered into the Smeds’ red rocket. “Janet and Bill stole out that night / While their families slept / and the squoon shone bright. Despite parallel contemptuous commands to “Never, never play with” the other group, Janet and Bill secretly bond and grow up to marry. The illustrations’ eye-catching colors are intensely saturated throughout, sometimes jarringly so.

Smeds and Smoos alike have antennae and tubular noses, but Smeds, red, have webbed feet they wear bare while Smoos, blue, sport elflike boots. Not far away, on a humplety hill, / There lived a young Smoo / by the name of Bill.” The patter and nonsense words ( wurpular, trockle) invoke Dr. “By a loobular lake on a far-off planet / There lived a young Smed, / and her name was Janet. This tale of prejudiced extraterrestrials jumps immediately into rollicking verse. Two youngsters from mutually hostile groups connect.

The smeds and the smoos by julia donaldson