The Bus Ride

A bus trip to Grandma's provides many stories for a red-cardiganed little girl and for alert readers. An intriguing cast of passengers includes two schoolgirl bunnies, a sleepy sloth, a young wolf, etc. The pictures tell their stories, supplemented by the girl's internal monologue and headlines in another passenger's newspaper. This benign narrative enacted in gentle drawings will bear repeated re-readings.

A bus trip to Grandma’s provides many stories for the little girl in the red cardigan and for the alert reader. The cast of passengers coming on and off the bus includes a pair of schoolgirl bunnies, a cat with her knitting, a very small mouse with an even smaller phone, a very large bear in blue boots, and a sleepy sloth. The pictures tell the stories, supplemented by some spare internal monologue from the little girl and various intriguing headlines in a newspaper that one of the passengers is reading. Our hero shares her cookies with a young wolf and rumbles a potential pickpocket in the form of a trench-coated fox. The bus fills up and empties out, and the little girl arrives at Grandma’s stop safe and sound. But as the bus pulls away, it carries some of its stories with it. Was the creature hidden behind the newspaper an animal or a human? Is the sloth ever going to wake up? What really happened when the bus went into that dark tunnel? This benign narrative enacted in gentle drawings with subdued hues and a bus-appropriate elongated landscape format will bear repeated re-readings and re-lookings. sarah ellis