Chu’s Day at the Beach

Chu’s Day at the Beach is the third entry in Neil Gaiman’s Chu picture book trilogy, illustrated as ever by Adam Rex. The series began with Chu’s Day, in which the small panda Chu’s enormous suppressed sneeze threatens to become a major event for everyone around him. It continued with Chu’s First Day of School. This book takes Chu and his family to the seaside, where the small panda’s sneeze meets the open ocean for the first time, with consequences that the cover art makes pretty clear.

Gaiman has a real feel for what a picture book needs. The text is sparse, the rhythm of the prose is built for reading aloud, and the structure is built around the kind of repeating anticipation that very young children love. Chu’s family arrives at the beach. Chu encounters all the dusty and salty and itchy things that a beach offers a small panda with a powerful nose. The reader knows what is coming. The pleasure is in the slow build to the moment when the sneeze finally arrives.

Adam Rex’s illustrations are the other half of the book. Painted in rich detail with a tactile quality that almost feels like collage, the spreads give Chu’s small panda body and his enormous suppressed sneeze the kind of visual weight that makes the eventual eruption land properly. The seaside setting gives Rex room to play with sand, water, sea creatures, and the kind of small visual jokes that reward repeat readings. The book is a more visually expansive piece than the earlier two entries, with the open ocean and the broad beach giving the artwork room to breathe.

Chu’s Day at the Beach completes the small trilogy and gives families with young children three books that work together as a connected series. The pleasure of the books for parents reading aloud is in the timing of the page turns, the buildup of the sneeze, and the very satisfying eventual release. For families with very young children who are starting to enjoy the page turning anticipation that is the heart of the picture book form, the Chu books are reliable favorites.