When Sunlight Tiptoes

Balloons, birds, sunlight, and flowers, When Sunlight Tiptoes is full of happy dancing objects and colourful descriptions. This cheerful board book follows a child and her parents through their day, from eating breakfast to going out in the city and visiting different shops and markets and ending with a stop to watch some pigeons. Gillian Sze uses simple descriptions and the repetition of lines to create a sweet story of a family’s day. Soyeon Kim’s illustrations, rendered in soft pastel colours, are beautiful. The illustrations add a hint of magic and whimsy to the book that is not present in the text and end with a depiction of the girl riding a pigeon.

Gillian Sze’s words are cheerful with a gentle poetry. Although many of the lines rhyme, the rhyming is very loose, and, in a number of instances, words are used that do not quite rhyme. For example, “whistles” and “sizzle” are paired and do not quite rhyme with each other. In other instances, lines do not rhyme at all, as with “it is” and “this.” It is common for board books to include rhyming lines, and the inconsistency of the rhymes in When Sunlight Tiptoes can be a bit jarring for a reader expecting a clearer poetic cadence with exact rhymes. The book also includes a pattern of repeating lines which creates a nice narrative flow through the book. Overall, When Sunlight Tiptoes is a gentle story of everyday wonder.