Hold the Mustard

October 2, 2025

When my daughter Madison was very young, David Shannon’s Duck on a Bike helped her realize that people can think one thing and say another.

Duck rode past Cow and waved. “M-o-o-o,” said Cow. But what she thought was, “A duck on a bike? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen!”

It was Shannon’s wonderful illustrations—the animals' expressive faces—that helped Madison understand that each of us has an inner life. She’d point at each animal and ask, “What’s HE thinking?" For a while, this became our ritual with every book we'd read. “What’s SHE thinking? What ELSE?” David and I would spin elaborate backstories. Bedtime got longer, but we didn’t mind.

A few years later, when Madison could read, I figured we’d moved past picture books, and I embraced her solo chapter-book phase as progress. But one day I found her reading Happy Birthday to You aloud to her sister. They lingered on Dr. Seuss’s wonderful illustration of the Mustard-Off Pools.

“For me, it wouldn’t be mustard, it would be ketchup,” said Ella.
“For me, it would be cake icing,” said Madison. "Pink."

As my girls painted word pictures in the air of their dream birthday pools, I realized that somewhere along the way, I'd stopped listening to what the pictures in the books were saying. But art doesn’t just illustrate, it's fully the other half of the story. Art nourishes our imaginations in a way words alone can’t. It teaches us to linger in the details. So picture books flooded back into our family rotation. 

Screens can show you images, sure. But a picture book that you hold in your hands does more: It pops you on the bicycle, fills your pools with vivid imagery, sits you shoulder-to-shoulder with someone you love, and whispers in your ear: “What’s SHE thinking? What ELSE?”

—Debra Ross, publisher

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