SOGGY SATURDAY
From the Bonnie Bumble series
by Phyllis Root & illustrated by Helen Craig
A book of such beguiling simplicity, you’ll be looking under the last page to make sure you didn’t miss the punch line. Bonnie Bumble continues to work her way through the week with this fifth in a series of stories that can be read to or by early readers. In this installment, Bonnie’s farm gets a good soaking from a summer rain, so good a soaking it has washed the blue right out of the sky and onto the animals and the barnyard. That’s right: Everyone gets the blues. “So Bonnie got busy with brushes and buckets.” She paints everything back to normal, even the sky. Except her dog Spot, who takes a sampling from each of the buckets and emerges with a vibrant, tie-dyed look. Craig’s watercolors suggest a hint of the imp in Bonnie, though she’s keeping it in check here, perhaps to let it loose in her next adventure. Forget verbal and visual pyrotechnics, forget irony: Root invests this story with an unvarnished sweetness and a genuine innocence that readers can’t help but enjoy. (Picture book. 2-4)