Where’s My Joey?

It’s supper time, and when Joey doesn’t respond to his apron-wearing mother’s summoning call, she goes in search of him. Mom is a kangaroo, and Joey is, of course, a joey, the term applied to the young of marsupials. The simple story consists of the mother’s visits to a series of Joey’s animal friends where she asks if they have seen her little one. Each response sends her on to yet another animal until she encounters Mamma Koala who replies, “No, let me ask the little one in my pouch.” Suddenly, Mother Kangaroo realizes where she had not yet looked, and there she found her son who had managed to remain asleep through all of her journeying.

A note about the author, Wendy Monica Winter, who presently lives in Squamish, British Columbia, says that she came up with the idea for the story while teaching in Perth, Australia. The book opens with a spread dominated by a labeled map of Australia that is accompanied by two smaller insert maps, one of Tasmania and the other Canada, with the latter highlighting the province of British Columbia.

While the storyline is thin, the book’s strength resides in its introduction to six of the continent’s native animals. “JOEY’S PLAYFUL PALS”, a four-page portion of the book’s end matter, provides several paragraphs of factual information about kangaroos, echidnas, emus, quokkas, kookaburras and kolas. Though Joey’s mother visited the Great Barrier Reef in her quest to find him and spoke collectively to Whale, Turtle and Ray, they were not included in this section. Youngsters may wonder why they were omitted. Similarly, Ruby Rabbit, Mother Kangaroo’s first animal stop, is not talked about, a significant admission given that it is one of Australia’s most visible introduced species. These pages conclude with:

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE JOEY’S PLAYFUL PALS,
INCLUDING PRONUNCIATIONS AND FUN ANIMAL FACTS,
AT WENDYMONICAWINTER.COM/PALS

Going to the website leads to a link to “Joey’s Pals”, the text of which largely repeats that found in the book’s “JOEY’S PLAYFUL PALS” portion; however, the website adds brief information about the seven animals that had been omitted in the book’s information section. Apparently the Southern Cross is one of Joey’s friends as it’s also included in this section. The book’s readers may have entirely missed noticing the constellation as it’s included in the wordless closing nighttime spread where readers’ eyes will be drawn to Mother Kangaroo who is reading a copy of Where’s My Joey?, likely as a bedtime story, to her now suppered son. On the website, each of the animal’s names is followed by a “(Click here for pronunciation)” link. While hearing the word is helpful, more immediately useful would have been a phonetic pronunciation guide in the book, such as “uh·kid·nuh” for echidna.

Other end matter includes a repetition of the opening map spread, but this map includes changes to some of the details, and readers are invited to “Spot all the differences between the two maps”. Doing so will be particularly challenging as readers will have to flip back and forth in the book while holding the two map images in their minds. To be able to confirm their answers, readers must go to the aforementioned website. A simple one-page maze invites children to “Use your finger to follow the path that Mother Kangaroo takes to find her Joey.”

The story takes an odd turn at the point where Mother Kangaroo asks the Kookaburra Family if Joey is with them. They reply:

No. I’m sorry to say that he left a long time ago.

Joey said that he was going to phone some of his Canadian friends.

The next pair of facing pages sees Mom on an ancient (and I do mean ancient) phone calling Canada and speaking to a moose who is wearing a BC Parks warden’s badge and is accompanied by a raccoon, a bear cub, a beaver and a Canada jay. While their information leads to yet another Australian contact, there seems to be no logical reason plot-wise for this Canadian diversion in setting.

While the convention is that text is read left to right and top to bottom, occasionally the text placement in Where’s My Joey? contravenes that structure. Though such changes will not impact adult readers, recently independent readers may find some text pages initially challenging.

The cartoon-like illustrations, by Roxana Chitanu Antochi, “a self-taught Romanian illustrator living in Italy”, are excellent. The animals’ faces and postures reflect their concern over the missing child. Antochi has obviously done her research as her backgrounds are not generic in nature but reflect Australia’s flora. For example, in the opening spread. Mother Kangaroo’s supper call takes place against a backdrop that includes two boab trees. And the koala isn’t in just any tree, but a eucalyptus tree, one of its food sources. And when the setting briefly becomes British Columbia, the trees are oaks. Given the blank pages at the end of the book, perhaps Winter could have included another information section, this one about Australia’s trees and plants.