STOP THE BALL!

An errant ball leads to endless fun.

In Strasser’s board book, cumulative, controlled text combines with colorful cartoon drawings chock-full of visual cues to support decoding. To start, “Duck’s playing ball.” An illustration shows Duck on the left-hand side of the spread, kicking a red-and-white ball across the gutter and past a soccer goal. As the ball sails by, a snail crawls up the goal, but it’s a sleeping owl on the right-hand side who appears in the next scene. The ball startles the owl awake, and it descends to run with Duck after the ball. A predictable pattern is established wherein the ball somehow disturbs a creature on the right-hand side who then joins those from previous spreads on the subsequent left-hand side of the following spread to chase the ball. Cumulative text adds each creature to the list until “Duck runs. Owl runs. Spider runs. Dog runs. Rat runs. Everyone runs after it.” Then they halt, spying an alligator as the ball bounces into the water. “Uh-oh” turns to “Phew!” when the creatures realize the gator is a child’s floating toy. But then the blond imp (who has skin the white of the page) kicks the ball, and they all run after it, back to the soccer goal, where the snail has made slow progress to the top. Strasser evokes a sense of joyful chaos that will immensely appeal to the target audience.

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