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!”