A brilliant evocation of a toddler having a humungous temper tantrum! He starts out trying to get the biscuit tin off a high shelf and ends up ignominiously on the floor, having fallen with a bump. Mum is suitably sympathetic, but toddler isn’t having hugs. He wants that biscuit, and he works himself up into a proper tantrum. The red squiggle marks above his head get bigger and bigger until he is ‘red red red’ all over and even bangs his head on the floor. Mum has a gentle suggestion: why not count to ten, and as they count together slowly, the little boy begins to calm down. The sequence of pictures as he does this are wonderfully funny and lovable, and he and mum end up lying on the floor taking deep breaths. The biscuit tin then comes into action, and our toddler and mum have not one but two biscuits each before saying, ‘I love you.’ Dunbar’s poetry is almost as super as her illustrations, and the situation is one that every parent will know only too well. A great way to handle this particular predicament, and the red squiggled end papers are a perfect reflection of what happens in the pages.