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OH, LEWIS! by Eva Rice

OH, LEWIS!

By

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 1974
Publisher: Macmillan

The everyday occasion of a small boy's bus ride with his mother and sister to the butcher's and the bakery, with no greater excitement along the way than his difficulties in keeping his winter clothing done up, is individualized in warm, low-keyed pictures. Rice stresses the ordinariness of the sights and signs (BUS STOP, Fast Service While You Wait, etc.) en route yet gives the characters a bemused sobriety that makes Lewis's typical clumsiness both appealing and funny. Mama bending down to buckle Lewis's boots, Lewis's mittens on the floor of the bus some inches below his dangling feet, the tea party at the end of the trying voyage -- all are seen with a droll, slanted sort of sympathy and with consistent fidelity to Lewis's frame of reference. Which any pre-schooler who has been through the bundling-up hassle will easily share.