My Lala

Sharing is a concept that must be learned, and one of a child’s first words, often expressed most emphatically, is mine (or its toddler variant of my, the child having yet to master the grammatical difference between the possessive pronoun and the possessive adjective).

King’s story, told in rhyming couplets, features the book title’s little girl who, upon awakening one morning, decides that “she owned the world” and sets out to visually assert that claim by tagging what’s “My” by sticking the adhesive shiny red dots she found in her “My Lala box” on everything she asserts as belonging to her. Initially, Lala confines her “dotting” to things within her room, objects like “My Lala bear”, “My Lala blankie”, “My Lala raincoat” and “My Lala penguin and My Lala sheep” (stuffies) before venturing further afield and “put[ting] dots on dad-daddy’s socks”.

Lala’s “dotting” activities appear to be at an end with her father’s footwear as she has used the last of the adhesive red dots, but then Lala remembers that the drawers in her “My Lala box” contain the necessary raw materials for her to create her own red dots, and “So all of that day Lala sat on her bed/snip snapping more dots and painting them red...” “...till My Lala room was filled ceiling to floor with My Lala dots” which she will use tomorrow to “stick My Lala dots on the rest of the world...”

Chua’s Photoshop artwork, a mix of spreads and single pages, portrays Lala in her sleepwear, one-piece animal pajamas complete with a tail. Chua addresses the details in King’s brief text while adding to it visually. For example, when King writes” “Here’s a shiny red dot for My Lala bear,/who doesn’t complain when I trim-trim her hair”, Chua’s teddy bear sports a couple of bandaids that speak to those earlier times when Lala, armed with scissors, attempted to cut her toy’s fur.

Though King speaks to a phase in most children’s lives, that period of possessive egocentrism before they come to distinguish among possessives like “mine”, “yours” “ours” and “theirs”, the story really doesn’t lead anywhere, and the book’s conclusion is flat. While Lala appears to be a toddler, King has her utter the word “Egad!” and in possession of sufficient fine motor control to cut out perfect dots. My Lala is an acceptable read, but it doesn’t rise to the level of a must-buy.