I Like My Bike

There’s good reason for the girl in the driver’s seat of this breezy I Like to Read offering by Ferrari (No Honking Allowed!) to be enamored of her bike. With her helmet-wearing dog happily stashed in her basket aside a gift box, she zooms through the background of most spreads while foregrounded vehicles reveal their colorful cargo: a shark fills the back of a limo, a lion rides shotgun in a VW bus, a tiger reads a book in a mobile zoo cage, and a tiny mouse drives an enormous cheese truck. The bare-bones text consists of each driver appreciating their specific vehicle (“I like my truck” says a cactus driving a flowery transport), while loosely rendered mixed-media art fills in the story line. As a grandmotherly woman hitches several rides and a helicopter hovers overhead, the freewheeling cyclist eschews the highway for flower-filled country roads. Ferrari wryly drives home his tale’s message in a visually telling finale revealing the vexed car, truck, and bus drivers snarled in traffic while the girl, in satisfyingly timely fashion, pedals to her festive destination foreshadowed by visual clues readers glean along the way. Ages 4–8. [em](Jan.)  [/em]