Wild Blue by Dashka
Slater, illustrated by Laura Hughes. PICTURE BOOK. Candlewick Press, 2023.
$19. 9781536215670
BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3) –
ESSENTIAL
APPEAL TO: MANY
The subtitle “Taming a Big-Kid
Bike” on the title page sets up the imagery of this story nicely. Young Kayla
loves riding her pink pony (an “itty-bitty bike” pictured with training wheels)
until her dad says it’s time to swap it for a bigger bike. She “wrangles” a
blue one “from the herd” and names it Wild Blue. However, it takes her some
time before she feels one with her new ride.
Throughout the story, Kayla
thinks and talks about her bike as a horse, approaches and treats it as a
horse, sees it and other bikes being ridden around the park as horses. The
illustrator includes plenty of pictures of Kayla with her red helmet, blue bike,
and baby-carrying dad set in a town or park, but the ones showing Kayla wearing
a red cowboy and riding or standing next to a beautiful blue horse pull you
right into her point-of-view. These choice illustrations, along with the
present tense that the author uses for the story, make Kayla’s experience
particularly engaging and endearing.
Reviewer: P.K. Foster, MLS, elementary
school teacher-librarian
No comments:
Post a Comment