Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Wild Blue by Dashka Slater, illustrated by Laura Hughes - ESSENTIAL

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

Welcome to Kiss the Book Jr.!

Welcome! Kiss the Book Jr. is for board books, picture books, early readers, and chapter books.  Also, any novels and non-fiction that we ag...