The Great Parade begins accidentally with a doughnut tied onto Billy’s belt with a string, presumably to free his hands to carry his big birthday box on a cross-town journey. Hen, fancying a doughnut crumb, trails him hopefully. When a cat follows Hen, and a dressed-up dog follows the cat, a veritable parade is born: “Now you can imagine all the confusion / when somewhere on Main Street they picked up a band— / all noisy and joyful and jolly and gleaming, / all beaming with pleasure like this had been planned.” Bond’s delightful poetry rolls off the tongue, gaining momentum with the ever-growing parade. In old-fashioned, elegant watercolor paintings, red-cheeked villagers in circus-like garb (along with a few nursery-rhyme characters) traipse across roomy seas of cream-colored paper, often sneaking into the left side of the spread or running off the opposite page. A “piled-up spectacle” ensues when Billy stops, ducks behind a tree and makes his way to where he was going in the first place—the beach, to sail his new toy sailboat: “And all afternoon, as the bay bluely gleamed, / this Billy set sail and happily dreamed.” (He eats the doughnut, too!) (Picture book. 3-7)
