PICNIC

In what promises to be the first of a series of do-overs, McCully offers repainted, but by-and-large identical, illustrations and a brief text for an originally wordless offering from 1984. Once again a multitudinous mouse clan piles into the pickup and jounces off down a country road for a pond-side picnic. But “no one sees Little Bitty fall off the truck,” or notices the missing sib until considerably later. Switching back and forth between the family and its stranded member, McCully shows the latter becoming more self-confident as the former grows more frantic. But the hue and cry ends in a happy reunion, and it’s “picnic time at last!” The added words, which are mostly snatches of dialogue or song, are more distraction than enhancement (the original was perfect in its wordlessness), but it’s good to have this sprightly family adventure available again, and in a larger format, too. (Picture book. 5-7)