Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

K-Gr 2–Paul Bunyan was “a very big boy, born in a very small town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.” He and his blue ox, Babe, have trouble concentrating on anything but Mom’s pancakes. She spends so much time making them that she can’t tend her fields, and Paul and Babe’s attempts to help out only end in squashed vegetables. So they decide to “follow their stomachs and find their pancake fortune out in the great big world.” They meet Brimstone Bill, who keeps them in pancakes while they help him log the land. Along the way, of course, they manage to create the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. When they start to feel sick from eating too many pancakes, they head home to Mom, who feeds them good food while they help her grow “Bunyan-sized veggies.” Luckhurst’s gouache-on-paper artwork is bright and bold, and the text works well as a storytime read-aloud. As one would expect, the author takes the exaggerated and hyperbolic aspects of this tale and uses them to great effect. However, the book’s page design is busy with unnecessary emphasis on sections of text, and this detracts from the depiction of Paul and Babe’s scale and size; it can also make the text difficult to read, especially where it gets integrated into the art. While this tale might work as a fresh approach to promoting balanced diets, Steven Kellogg’s Paul Bunyan (HarperCollins, 1985) remains the gold standard for introducing this larger-than-life character.–Laura Lutz, Pratt Institute, New York City