THE BUS IS FOR US

There are so many ways to ride; some are flights of imagination.

Various young children express their travel preferences in easy, rhyming text, beginning with "I really like / to ride my bike." A teddy bear is safely lashed to the back of the bike, and a red balloon trails behind. Other choices include a horse, a little boat, a big ship and an even bigger fish. Of course, that one's just a dream: "Sometimes I wish / I could ride on a fish." There’s also a car, a train, a sleigh and a balloon to the moon. Maybe the strangest of all is the big polar bear, which a smiling little girl rides "for a dare." As diverse as these forms of transportation are, the children are even more so, first depicted standing in a line on the title page spread. An Asian girl licks a big puff of cotton candy; similarly dressed Caucasian siblings hold hands; a black girl holds her dog’s leash. Each of the children appears in the transportation scenarios within. As the title indicates, the best ride of all is the bus, which adds passengers between the other descriptions of rides. The reason is clear: Everyone can ride together. Rosen's rhyming text has a relaxed, unforced feel, and his story is a nice mix of the practical and the fanciful. Tyler's warm watercolors add a dreamy layer of imagination to the story.

A lovely treatment of a perennially popular topic.