Harriet Gets Carried Away

by Jessie Sima

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2018

Harriet Gets Carried Away
Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima

42 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6911-1

Ages 3-6

Harriet wears costumes everywhere, from the laundromat to the park to the dentist. When her dads take her shopping for her birthday party snacks, she’s dressed as a penguin and waddles off in search of party hats. “… don’t get carried away,” they tell her, knowing their daughter. Harriet does get carried away—literally—by a passel of penguins she meets in the frozen food aisle. “Where are we going?” It turns out the penguins are going back home, in hot air balloons. “I don’t think I belong here,” Harriet says when they arrive. One penguin suggests she get rid of her red bow tie in order to fit in. “But Harriet didn’t care about fitting in—she cared about getting back to the store.” She negotiates a ride from an orca, and her dads are still in the snack aisle when she soars back into the store with the help of a flock of gulls. Wonderful illustrations chronicle biracial Harriet’s unusual journey and warm, funny, realistic details of her life in the city with her dads (one Black, one white) in an affirming story that celebrates imagination. (MS) ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center