Julius The Baby of The World by Kevin Henkes

Henkes, Kevin. Julius The Baby of The World. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1990.

Julius The Baby of the World is told by a young mouse Lilly who is jealous of her innocent baby brother. She hoped that he would go away and did mean things to him such as yelling into his crib. This lasted until snobby Cousin Garland called her brother disgusting. Lilly then stood up for her brother and made her repeat “Julius is the baby of the world.”

Lilly is a very jealous little girl which really brings out the theme in the book, learning how to share. Not only sharing in the sense of toys but also sharing the attention from her parents. The art is a major aspect of the book with a representational style because of the realistic quality. As I first read it I forget the characters were mice because of how real the art seems. Watercolors are used as well as black ink to define the line outline of the mice to make them stand out as bold characters.

This book is very relevant to children in the sense that the theme is about how we must not get jealous when someone is receiving more attention than us. There are also many hidden messages that can show us the social relevancy of the story. For instance on the pages that are outside of the home where the family is interacting with other mice some of the mice are white and some brown. This shows that Henkes wanted to add the factor of race in to show everyone was getting along.