Else-Marie has seven little daddies instead of one big one, and she worries how the other children will react when her daddies come to pick her up at afternoon playgroup.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Lindenbaum salutes the unconventional in this wacky debut--a Swedish import--about a girl with a happy though decidedly odd home life. In addition to her normal-size mother Else-Marie has seven tiny, identical daddies who, apart from their size, behave like daddies everywhere. (There are some differences, of course: relaxing after dinner, they all fit in one armchair and share a single newspaper.) Terror strikes one morning when Else-Marie's mother announces that her daddies will pick Else-Marie up at school. Although the girl spends an anxious day imagining all the dreadful things that could happen, her fears prove ungrounded. Her daddies are a big hit, and no one sits on them during story time. Lindenbaum's muted watercolors are filled with amusing details--a wedding picture on the living room wall, for example, shows the bride towering over her seven diminutive grooms. It's an outrageously comical approach to a universal childhood fear--being thought different. Freud would no doubt have a field day with Lindenbaum's off-the-wall treatment, but readers may well relish the ride. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2-- Else-Marie has seven little daddies. They are about 16 inches high. They do all the regular things associated with fathers--go off to work, come home on the bus, eat supper, and read the paper. Indeed, their life is so normal that Else-Marie does not in the least regard her situation as peculiar. However, when her mother announces that she has to work overtime and that Else-Marie's daddies will pick her up at playgroup, the child begins to worry that her playmates may find it strange that she has several little daddies instead of one big one. Au contraire , her friends don't seem to mind a bit. All through the story readers will search for a logical explanation, some missing puzzle piece regarding Else-Marie's bizarre situation. However, no answers are provided, no hints are given. This lack of resolution makes for an ultimately unsatisfying story, with awkward attempts at humor. The illustrations, done in a cartoon style, portray rather unappealing characters with bulging eyes and stringy hair, and the colors are murky. --Alexandra Marris, Rochester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seven little, six little, five little daddies,
By
This review is from: Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies (Hardcover)
Sometimes a picture book is so bizarre, so entirely out of left-field, and so wacked-out mesmerizingly baffling that the average adult reader has no choice but to fall head over heels in love with it. Such, I tell you, is the case with, "Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies". I stumbled across this book entirely by chance. My library has a rather overwhelming amount of picture books and many of these end up in a kind of Overflow of No Return. I decided to take it upon myself to inspect and sort out this overflow and was doing a pretty darn good job of it when this book fell into my lap. At first I couldn't quite wrap my head around the cover, the title, and the concept. Then, as I flipped through and found it full of early 1990s Swedish day-to-day life (albeit with THE most Freudian conceit ever to grace a picture book's pages) I found myself reading it again and again and again. Completely forgotten and utterly wonderful, I harbor the strange secret hope that perhaps someday someone somewhere will take it upon themselves to republish this little nugget of children's literature gold. Amazing doesn't even begin to describe it.
Else-Marie has seven little daddies. Most people have one big one. She has seven small ones. It's not so bad usually. Like all the other kids she knows, she waits for them to come home at the end of the day. They usually like to play a game with her in the evening, though sometimes they'll share a single paper between themselves. Today, however, things are different. Else-Marie's mother has informed her daughter that she won't be able to pick her up from work today. Can you guess who will? Thaaat's right! Her seven fathers. Suddenly the girl is aware that her family situation might seem a bit odd to the other kids. She has nightmarish visions of her daddies getting run up a tree by a dog, accidentally sat on by the teacher, or played with as dolls by the other kids. Of course, when the time actually comes it turns out that Else-Marie had nothing to worry about. Her daddies are the hit of her class. They tell stories no one else as heard and think that the birdhouse their daughter has constructed is top notch. In the end, Else-Marie learns to respect her non-traditional family and sums up this acceptance quite simply: "I wouldn't trade my seven little daddies - not for all the daddies in the world". WOW! It's a little painful to read a book when your jaw is hanging somewhere in the vicinity of your midriff, but I think I managed it. How do I even begin to parse this? First of all, let's just make one thing bloody clear. Some people are going to be like me. They'll find the book amusing, creative, and mind-blowing. Others will be like the School Library Journal reviewer who said of the book, "All through the story readers will search for a logical explanation, some missing puzzle piece regarding Else-Marie's bizarre situation. However, no answers are provided, no hints are given. This lack of resolution makes for an ultimately unsatisfying story, with awkward attempts at humor". I suppose some people might see it that way. Not me. For me, the joy of this book is the complete and total immersion into a world in which a kid can have one pop or seven, all depending on how one is raised. And I seriously contest the reviewer's claim that the humor in this book is "awkward". On the contrary, it's spot on nine times out of ten. The story itself is funny in its conceit alone. When it starts to get into the logistics of the situation (imagine having to share a bathroom with that many family patriarchs) it gets funnier. About the time Else-Marie is getting embarrassed by her parents' singing (and what kid hasn't faced that shame in one way or another?) you feel for the kid but are laughing all the same. So she has seven daddies. So what? Author Pija Lindenbaum is hitting some pretty universal nerves when she talks about the relationship between parents and their children, especially when she speaks to how parents embarrass their offspring. Oh, but I haven't even begun to describe the pictures. Again, the School Library Journal reviewer found the book to contain, "unappealing characters with bulging eyes and stringy hair, and the colors are murky". Actually, the colors are understated, not murky. And the characters are deeply appealing. They're not cutesy, of course, but they're fun. Now this book was originally published in Sweden and while the text is (as I said before) universal, the pictures definitely hail from the land of IKEA. Whether you're looking at the furniture in the school's staff room, the "FUT crme" in the mother's bedroom (omigod the bed is faaabulous!), or some of the street scenes, there is little doubt left in one's mind that this is not an American creation. Then there are the wonderful details. In the living room is a fabulous wedding photo of Else-Marie's mom and seven, yup, seven grooms clustered together. In the bathroom about fourteen tiny socks soak in a tub and reminder post-it notes like "Don't forget Else-Marie" are put at tiny daddy eye-height. You could try to rope this book into the Unconventional Family genre, but I wouldn't recommend it. As pleasant as seven small papas seems (I keep trying to work out the logistics surrounding Else-Marie's actual birth) it's not as if you're going to run into that many kids with fathers counting higher than 3 out there. Really, this is a story about a kid who's afraid of being different and who finds that maybe different is good in the end. Really, it's a very traditional story at heart. Heck, it's like Leo Lionni's, "Swimmy". Just exchange the fish in the story for seven Swedish fathers of minimal height. Okay, fine. It's weird. No one's denying that. But it's actually a lot of fun and one of those books that kids will truly enjoy. That is after they stop asking the adult reading it to them how any child can have seven fathers at once. Better prep your answers beforehand `cause the book is not about to give you any hints on the matter. This IS family fare, after all. I have a small list that I keep of children's picture books that I wish would be republished sometime soon. Consider "Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies" to now be number one on that list. It's like nothing you've ever seen before and definitely not anything you'll see again. Just a wonderful experiment in how far a picture book can go, and a fun story to boot. A must-read for anyone interested in alternate-reality children's literature. Plus I love that I live in a world where for one brief and shining moment a publisher thought it would be a good idea to publish this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Favorite Childhood Memory,
This review is from: Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies (Hardcover)
I was a voracious reader as a child, and few books stick out in my mind as much as "Else-Marie and her Seven Little Daddies." This book was constantly checked out from my elementary school library, in fact, it was a sort of craze in my first grade class. Twenty years later I still remember the pictures of the little daddies going about their routine.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elsa Marie and the seven little daddies,
By Dr.B (FL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies (Hardcover)
I am a psychologist and have used this book on more than one occasion in my office. Its offbeat enough and funny enough to allow for broad application with children. Children often find themselves feeling different and reacting negatively to that. This is a great way to open conversation about feelings with children. I, too, wish this book would be published again!
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