Are We There Yet?
Nina Laden and Adam McCauley
Chronicle Books
A small boy and his mother set off to drive to Grandma’s and they’ve barely started the journey when the boy pipes up with the words most parents are all too familiar with, “Are we there yet?” It’s a question that is repeated over and over together with mum’s “No.” response as the trip takes them onto the motorway, across a suspension bridge …
through farming countryside and a desert landscape, each of which includes increasingly surreal happenings …
They then leave the road and go first beneath the sea …
And then deep into outer space …
before finally emerging at their destination to be greeted by Gran whose garden is filled with topiaries of various things observant readers will have noticed along the way. And what does the boy have to say about the journey? He certainly doesn’t seem to number among the observant ones. His, to my mind, enigmatic final response seems at odds with what I had all along been taking (and celebrating as such) to be a series of glorious flights of fancy. Was it or was it not all in the child’s head?
McCauley’s mixed media illustrations are deliciously playful: look carefully at the opening living room scene and there, mainly scattered around the floor and sofa, are objects whose significance emerges during the drive.
A great book for developing visual literacy and developing talk most certainly; and those just starting to read too will get enormous pleasure in being able to read the minimal text themselves. There is so much to discover in every spread; this is one to revisit time and again when new insights and meanings will emerge.
My Family is a Zoo
K.A.Gerrard and Emma Dodd
Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Courtesy of a boy narrator we learn what happens when he and his dad start out on a journey (destination unknown to the younger of the two at least) together with one or two additional passengers.
On route they stop to pick up other family members together with their special friends
Seems the car has an every increasing capacity to take on all those extra passengers …
but where are they all going?
This is ‘not so much a family – More a family zoo!’
Finally they reach their destination where a wonderful surprise awaits …
There’s so much to enjoy in this story told through Kelly Gerrard’s gently humorous rhyming text that reads aloud well and Emma Dodd’s cute and cuddlesome character-filled scenes.
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