The Clean-Up Monster
My Dinosaur Shoes
Eleni Tassopoulos Wehner and Danamarie Hosler
Barefoot Books

These two board books feature happenings in the daily lives of neurodivergent siblings Roscoe and his elder sister, Ivy.

In the first, when their mother tells the children that it’s time to tidy up the job seems an overwhelming muddle of dough and toys. If only the ‘clean-up monster’ would come to their aid. Roscoe begins in completely the wrong way, getting more out, so he moves on to the dough but Ivy doesn’t like his way of tidying with container lids not matching the dough colours. The containers for the various toys all have visual signs indicating what goes where thus easing the process and then Mama appears in playful mood with the vacuum cleaner aka the clean-up monster.

In My Dinosaur Shoes, Roscoe is out-growing his soft, comfortable puppy shoes, his sister certainly thinks so. However Roscoe maintains that they’re not much too small and he definitely doesn’t need new ones. Ivy shows him some dinosaur shoes in a larger size, as well as pictures of other possible options. Roscoe ponders on them all but decides that he wants none of them. Ivy places the dinosaur shoes where her brother can see them every day and become accustomed to so doing.

Then one day his puppy shoes no longer feel comfy and soft. It’s time to try the dinosaur ones and hurrah1 they are absolutely perfect. Of course, he’s become used to seeing them so they no longer seem new.

The author, who is neurodivergent, explains on the back covers of both books that she developed her own strategies to use with her young neurodivergent children when the usual ones failed to work for them. These are illustrated in the simple stories for which Danamarie Hosler (also neurodivergent) shows Eleni’s strategies in action. Any parent/caregiver could benefit from adding these ideas to those they use already and little children will enjoy the simple stories.