Reviews

PreS-Gr 1‘Tuba tucked under his arm, a blond-haired boy sets off to his music lesson, with the words "Don't dillydally in the woods" ringing in his ears. However, when the lines of the road curve upward into a tree, the boy finds himself swinging on the branches and napping in the shade. Soon, a curious squirrel sounds a note from the instrument, bringing the forest animals to the scene, which, in turn, attracts a seemingly raucous bear. He, too, is quickly charmed by the boy's music making and when a large bounding note nearly carries the boy away, it's the bear who swiftly saves him. In the penultimate double-page spread, the tuba-playing boy, now happily astride the bear's back and accompanied by the gleeful animals, arrives safely‘but tardy‘to his lesson. On this final page, he is greeted with the book's only other words, "Young man, you're late." This nearly wordless story celebrates the joy of music, and children will be caught up in the mirth. Mostly, though, they will be captivated by Felix's imaginative use of line‘with the road that becomes a tree, that becomes a road, that breaks into fractured lines with the bear's appearance, that swirls up into a curve resembling the shape of a tuba, and finally back into a road‘and by her playful deployment of jumbo black notes that bounce about the pages. The colorful texture gives added dimension to the characters.‘Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

Puckish visual humor marks this near-wordless tale of a tuba-toting lad waylaid by adventure as he heads to his music lesson. With the dense hashmarks of Felix's (The Numbers) pastel strokes forming an almost kinetic backdrop, the action moves forward, impelled by the strong unifying feature of five horizontal lines stretched across the bottom of the pages. At first the lines appear to form a road, then they metamorphose into a tree trunk for the boy to climb and play on, and finally become a musical staff as the boy begins to play his instrument. His oompah-ing attracts a cozy assortment of woodland creatures, who caper about in pursuit of the fat notes he produces and become entangled in the lines of the staff. They're eventually mollified by the strains of the boy's music. A frothy little confection infused with a gentle sensibility, this buoyant picture book more than makes up in charm what it lacks in substance. Readers treated to its imaginative pleasures will almost certainly call for an encore. Ages 5-10. (Oct.)