Hajimete no Otsukai is a best-selling picture book about the first errand of a small girl. This is the first story picture book with a text by Tsutsui Yoriko (1945 -) and illustrations by Hayashi Akiko (1945 -).
Mii-chan, a five-year-old girl, is asked by her mother to go to a shop
and buy milk for the baby all by herself. She goes through the town, up
a slope, to the shop, with two 100-yen coins in her hand. What she did
and how she felt at each step of her errand is closely described in both
by words and pictures. In the end, she buys the milk and leaves the store
- without receiving change. The cover illustration shows smiling Mii-chan
with a package of milk in her hands. Probably this is her smile as she
shows her mother after her successful errand. Adult readers as well as
children sympathize with the idea that pride that one can do something
by oneself and the accomplishment of a hard task greatly helps children
mature.
Pictures with color pencils and color ink are by Hayashi. They are
calm, tender, and realistic, and welcomed by many readers. Hayashi drew
the detailed pictures with keen observant eyes. Pictures tell more than
the story itself: a bill for a lost cat, for example, can be seen in a
picture, and in another, there is the cat itself. Those playful elements
attract readers into the world of this picture book.
The pictures are highly praised by many critics: one says that the
success of this book owes much to the well-calculated pictures by Hayashi:
another says that the pictures capture the moment of the growth of a child.
On the other hand, some claimed that they are stereotyped and weak in expression.
Hajimete no Otsukai was first published in a Kodomo no Tomo [Children's Companion] Library hardcover edition. Later, it became one of the Children's Companion Album series.
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