Sugar and Snails

Written by Sarah Tsiang

Illustrated by Sonja Wimmer

Annick Press

978-1-77321-005-6

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

March 2018

Though many nursery rhymes have some dark meaning behind them,  I like to think the old English nursery rhyme about boys being made of “frogs and snails and puppy dog tails” and girls being made of “sugar and spice and everything nice” was an innocent poem people may have used to poke fun at the differences between boys and girls.  Then again, maybe not.  But Sarah Tsiang takes the sexism out of that nursery rhyme and shows us that boys and girls can be just about anything they want to be.

From Sugar and Snails

by Sarah Tsiang 

illus. by Sonja Wimmer

Sugar and Snails begins with an embroidered piece of stitchery with the old rhyme on it, and then page by page a grandfather unravels that saying for his grandchildren after the boy wonders about sweet boys such as himself.  The elderly man suggests a myriad of things boys and girls could be as he pretends to recall how the rhyme goes.  But as he suggests things, the grandchildren recognize that they just don't fit.  She doesn't like dresses, and he doesn't like frogs.  There's rocks and butterfly socks, rain boots and whales, and even dirt and lemon dessert.  Any of these could be assigned to either child or both.  It's an equal opportunity rhyme of a menagerie of delights, which ends with the grandfather proclaiming to them, "Dangnamit, I give up.  What in the heck are you made of?" and the stitches of the embroidery being unravelled by little hands.

From Sugar and Snails

by Sarah Tsiang 

illus. by Sonja Wimmer

Sarah Tsiang makes Sugar and Snails a wacky speculative poem that attempts, amusingly though foolishly, to differentiate between boys and girls.  But it's German artist Sonja Wimmer's surreal illustrations that bring that outrageousness to the forefront.  Sonja Wimmer, who illustrated Belle DeMont's wonderful I Love My Purse (Annick, 2017), lends wonderful fluidity and connectedness between the children and that which might define either of them, with a frisson of humour and folly. 

From Sugar and Snails

by Sarah Tsiang 

illus. by Sonja Wimmer

If Sugar and Snails teaches us anything, it's that labelling is restrictive and inappropriate, and children, girls, boys or non-binary, should just be themselves, no matter what an old rhyme proposes.