Book: Earrings!

Overview
Judith Viorst’s 1993 picture book Earrings! is a comic, single-voice plea from a determined young girl who wants her ears pierced more than anything. Framed as a dramatic monologue that bounces along with rhythmic persistence, it captures a child’s laser-focused desire, the logic-bending arguments summoned in service of that desire, and the ongoing negotiation with parents who keep saying not yet. The result is a portrait of wanting, big, bright, and a little outrageous, rendered with playful illustrations that expand the narrator’s fantasies into sight gags and daydreams.

Narrative and Voice
The entire story unfolds from the child’s point of view. She addresses her parents, rehearsing and revising her case in real time, as though she’s trying on reasons the way she imagines trying on jewelry. The voice is theatrical, insistent, and gleefully repetitive, cycling through claims that earrings are essential, that they signal growing up, and that every other girl already has them. Viorst uses repetition and escalating comparisons to mirror how kids argue when they care profoundly about a single wish, and to reveal how certainty can wobble into hyperbole when met with parental resistance.

What Happens
Plot, in the conventional sense, is secondary to performance. The girl imagines how earrings will transform her life: how they will sparkle at school, how friends will admire them, how she will choose among hoops, studs, and long dangling shapes. She rehearses bravery for the piercing itself, promising she can handle a tiny pinch. She vows to be extra responsible, cleaning, not complaining, being unfailingly polite, if only she can have her ears pierced. The parents exist mostly offstage, their stance distilled to a calm refusal and a familiar boundary about waiting until she is older. Each time she runs into that boundary, the ingenuity of her arguments increases. She tries fairness (everyone else is allowed), bargaining (she’ll trade privileges), and future-casting (she’ll be careful, she’ll take care of them properly). The story doesn’t culminate in a sudden yes; rather, it ends where many household debates do: with the child still pleading, energizing herself for the next round.

Themes and Humor
Earrings! plays with the push-and-pull between a child’s autonomy and a parent’s gatekeeping. Viorst translates a simple wish into an exploration of how kids test rules, assemble rhetoric, and learn to tolerate frustration. The comedy springs from the gap between the narrator’s over-the-top certainty and the mundane reality of family rules. Hyperbolic images amplify her feelings, earrings so extravagant they become their own occasions, scenes in which a modest sparkle grows into theatrical glamour. Underneath the laughter is a warm recognition: the desire to feel older, to control one’s body, and to join a peer group can feel urgent and enormous when you’re small.

Visuals and Appeal
The accompanying art heightens the monologue’s bounce, turning her arguments into imaginative set pieces. Daydreams spill across pages as she pictures herself in every conceivable pair, while expressions and body language sell the melodrama of waiting. Words and pictures work in tandem: the text supplies the relentless cadence of persuasion; the images nudge it toward affectionate satire.

Why It Endures
Earrings! remains a favorite because it treats a child’s wish with both seriousness and wit. Parents recognize the negotiation; kids recognize the intensity of wanting. Viorst’s compact, rhythmic text and the expressive illustrations together create a small domestic epic about persistence, patience, and the art of making your case, no final verdict required.