Puss Reboots: Blog: June 2024: The Big Bath House

Recent posts

Reviews
The Baker and the Bard by Fern Haught The Big Bath House by Kyo Maclear and Gracey Zhang (Illustrator)
Boys Dance! by John Robert Allman and Luciano Lozano (Illustrator)
Bread Over Troubled Water by Winnie Archer and Emily Durante (Narrator)
A Dash of Death by Michelle Hillen Klump and Lisa Negron (Narrator)
Death in the Stacks by Jenn McKinlay and Allyson Ryan (Narrator)
Detective Sweet Pea: The Case of the Golden Bone by Sara Varon
Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo by William Joyce
Gótico by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Alexander Páez García (Translator)
In Farm's Way by Amanda Flower and Rachel Dulude (Narrator)
A Killer Romance by Maggie Blackburn and Christa Lewis (Narrator)
Meet Me on Mercer Street by Booki Vivat
Mission One: The Vice Principal Problem by Kekla Magoon, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Molly Murakami (Illustrator)
Murder by the Seashore by Samara Yew and Catherine Ho (Narrator)
Murder in Volume by D.R. Meredith and Mara Lynne Thomas (Narrator)
Murder on Wheels by Lynn Cahoon and Susan Boyce (Narrator)
My Sister Eileen by Ruth McKenney
The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter Volume 3 by Kazuki Irodori et al
The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest
The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum and John R. Neill
Stowed Away by Barbara Ross and Dara Rosenberg (Narrator)
The Stranger in the Library by Eva Gates and Elise Arsenault (Narrator)
We All Play by Julie Flett

Miscellaneous
May 2024 Sources

May 2024 Summary

Thirty-seven years of tracking my reading

Previous month

The Big Bath House: 06/14/24

The Big Bath House by Kyo Maclear and Gracey Zhang (Illustrator) (2021) is a picture book about visiting family in Japan. It's set around a trip to the local onsen.

Like Kindling by Traci Chee (2024), the entire book is done in second person. This time, though, it's a singular point of view: you the reader standing in for the girl visiting her grandmother and aunts. And it's set in future tense: When you get there, you'll do this.

The text never mentions nudity but Gracey Zhang's illustrations present the obvious nudity (because of a communal bathhouse) as mater of fact. It's there and a wide range of feminine bodies and ages are presented. It's not sexualized. It's not sensationalized. It's just there in the background of a memory laced with anticipation for the next time visiting family.

Five stars