A little girl who enjoys playing nurse comes to her brother’s aid. Meghan Cox Gurdon reviews Simon James’s “Nurse Clementine” 

Like all the best picture books, Simon James’s “Nurse Clementine” (Candlewick, 40 pages, $15.99) packs a remarkable amount of nuance, humor and emotional truth into a relatively small number of pages—though children ages 3-7 who ask to hear it read aloud repeatedly may notice only what an endearing book it is.

Our protagonist is a young girl whose parents give her a nurse’s outfit and a first-aid kit for her birthday. “It’s just what I wanted,” Nurse Clementine says, gravely donning her new attire. She doesn’t have long to wait before her first emergency: When her father bangs his toe, Nurse Clementine jumps into action. In Mr. James’s sweet, unaffected illustrations we see her kneeling before her bemused parent, binding his injury with yards of gauze. He must keep the bandage on for a week. “A week?” her father moans. “A week,” she says firmly.

By good fortune, Nurse Clementine’s mother also needs treatment, as does the family dog. Vexingly, however, Nurse Clementine’s dream patient, her little brother, Tommy, refuses medical care. A caped superhero, he leaps from the furniture and zooms through the air, crashing every time. But when the nurse rushes to his aid, he shrugs her off. Poor Nurse Clementine! The frustrated caregiver tries practicing on herself, and even on a drainpipe, but that’s no fun. It is only after Tommy really needs his sister’s help, in a genuine emergency, that he and Nurse Clementine reach a happy accommodation. Swaddled like a mummy, Tommy must keep his bandages on for a week. “All week?” he says. “Great!”

‘Rex’ is the exciting new project that Simon is working on. He has been busy working on it for several months in between visits to schools and festivals during what has been a record year for speaking engagements all over the country. ‘Rex’ is nearly finished and will be published in the Spring with Walker Books. You can see more illustrations from this book coming here soon!

‘Here is a copy of the finished cover for ‘Nurse Clementine’. Making a cover is always the last thing to do when making a book, it is never easy to come up with something fresh and distinctive. I hope you like it.’ Simon James.

Wembury Beach was the place where I came up with the story of Sally and the Limpet.

I dedicated the book to Sally and Wembury Beach  in order to remember the day.

So it was a great pleasure to visit the local school at Wembury and share my books with the children, staff and parents. Many of the children had dressed up as characters from my stories, there were wonderful ‘Robomums’, ‘Jakes’ and of course, there were quite a few ‘Sallys’ with their limpet shells.

I would like to thank everyone there for making it a special day.

Here is a photo of Daisy, who’s Mum drew Sally on her daughter’s tee shirt  -rather too well for my liking!

Best wishes,

Simon.

Have you found it difficult to eat on the beach? Perhaps you have seen a seagull grab your sandwich, or watched your ice-cream melt on to the sand…

Simon has been working on a new book idea. It is about a little brother called Pete and his first visit to the beach.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!