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BOUNCE by Doreen Cronin

BOUNCE

by Doreen Cronin & illustrated by Scott Menchin

Pub Date: May 8th, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4169-1627-7
Publisher: Atheneum

In her bright paean to the joys of vertical movement, Cronin’s rhyming text is not just an invitation but an exhortation to young readers to bounce. The canine protagonist, in a red baseball cap worn backwards, follows a bunny through a cabbage patch. There’s also a frog, ballerinas, bees, bats and several other bouncers in all manner of locales. The bouncing dog gets a little respite when he lands in a kangaroo pouch. When he bounces too high, this turns into a bump and then a fall. At the end, covered in bandages, he concludes that it’s still “better to have bounced and bumped than never to have bounced at all.” Cronin comes up with an admirably broad spectrum of bouncers and bounce-upons, all enthusiastically nearly springing off the page. The bold simplicity of both the text and Menchin’s illustrations, rendered in pen and ink with digital color, should appeal to very young readers—and be within their reach. (Picture book. 3-6)