One girl goes on a very unique trip to Grandma’s house in The Bus Ride by Marianne Dubac (Kids Can Press, 2015). At first, as she boards a bus with her mother’s watchful eye, the reader may believe she is just any kid traveling to Grandmother’s house. To the reader’s surprise, this girl enters a fantasy world where animals join her on the bus.


The details in the pencil illustrations are what truly teach this story. The author-illustrator shows all the animals with realistic details, and yet they are truly anthropomorphic, with clothing, items to hold, and personalities. The girl interacts and befriends the animals, and each animal has a distinct detail that makes this book fun to revisit time and again. For example, the newspaper, which gets passed from passenger to passenger, features headlines of things that have just happened on the bus (the pick-pocket fox has been caught, for example). As I flipped back through the pages after reading, I found that there were many such details that were missed on my first read through.

The author chose to use very little text on each page, just a line on the bottom with the girl’s thoughts. In some respects, the text was not necessary at all, since the illustrations told such a fun story. Children who love finding details, and who love animals, will enjoy this book, even without needing to read the narration on the bottom of the pages.

This was another picture book that has been translated from French.
A lil girl rides the bus to go to her grandmother's place, for the first time on her own. She meets an assortment of animal characters on the bus. The book was very strongly reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood! Somehow, I just kept bracing myself for something terrible to happen (esp. when the girl decides to share her cookies with a fellow passenger, that too a WOLF!), luckily that was not the case though!

There are some tiny details splattered across the book, like the changing headlines on the newspaper that's being read by a passenger who never emerges from behind it.
However, I think maybe if the story is read to a classroom, the teacher would have to draw attention to these tiny facets of the story, which the tiny readers might otherwise miss.
[My favorite passenger was the pigeon in a hat! (^.^)]

This is a sweet almost-wordless picture book which embraces the urban fantasy ethic and aesthetic (Little Red takes the bus alone, and a wolf features) without relying on scares to interest its young readers. The countless miniature story arcs which take place in the margins around Little Red's personal adventure will delight and entertain readers, and there are quite a few "Easter eggs" for kids and their parents alike to spot. In many ways this is the perfect book for a small crowd at Story Time, when you have time to let the kids themselves tell the story. "What do you see happening on this page? Has something changed?" These questions alone will be enough to get the kids started sharing what they see and what they speculate will happen to Little Red. Have I mentioned that the illustrations are very sweet? They are. Very sweet indeed. A great book for multiple contexts.