Sheilah Egan (Children's Literature)
In this gentle, endearing story, a young African-American girl spends the day with her father ‘helping’ him in his office. His obvious devotion to and involvement with his family (he makes French toast for breakfast, her favorite of “all the breakfasts Daddy makes”) serves as a wonderfully subtle role model for all fathers. Boyd’s watercolors give life to the rhyming text, as in the opening scene when the eager to be “off to the office” girl awakens her parents, it is easy to see the father’s lifted eyebrow and the cat’s surprise at her early morning exuberance. The text and illustrations are full of the details of daily life; we watch the progression from home (via subway) to the office with a lunch break (at a street vendor’s cart) and a walk in the park, the afternoon meeting where the daughter displays her father’s charts, to the close of the day as the father praises his daughter for her help and she is proud of the work they have done together. Consideration for others, essential good manners, work ethics, and the unfolding sequence of a day’s events (so closely reflecting a good story’s requirements of beginning, middle, and end) are a natural part of the storyline and beautifully reflected in the illustrations--no moralizing or heavy tone mar the insertion of these life lessons. Teachers will be happy to see pie charts, graphs, and other examples of math principles at work in daily life--even the hopscotch drawing in the park is clearly numbered for the youngest observers to recognize and name. The views of family, work, and city life are as important as the wonderful relationship of the individual father and his daughter--all essential parts of the fully realized ‘whole’ encompassed in this picture book. 2006, Little Brown and Company, $15.99 Ages 4 to 8.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006 (Vol. 74, No. 8))
An urban father takes his young daughter to work. The story is told in the first-person voice of the unnamed little African-American girl, who is already standing over her parents' bed when the alarm clock goes off at seven a.m.-she can't wait to see Daddy's office. He makes a nice breakfast of French toast before the duo sets off on the subway. Bright watercolors, employing a broad palette and full of precise details, depict many highlights of the day's adventure: meeting all of Daddy's coworkers, getting lunch at a food cart on a street in Chinatown, watching Daddy give a sales presentation in the conference room. Pictures effectively evoke the day from start to finish. Unfortunately, the lackluster text, full of awkward rhymes, is not up to the quality of the illustrations and contributes little. Read the pictures and skip the words. 2006, Little, Brown, 32p, $15.99. Category: Picture book. Ages 3 to 6. © 2006 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 2006)
An African American girl describes the joyful day she spends with her father at his office. Her rhythmically challenged rhymes are awfully sophisticated ("We walk past shops and stores / And a tall man playing a horn. / Daddy likes to linger and listen / To the melodies being born") and the watercolors sometimes skew human proportions, but the warm relationship is tenderly conveyed. Category: Picture Books. 2006, Little, 32pp, 15.99. Ages 4 to 9. Rating: 4: Recommended, with minor flaws.