Book Reviews: And Red Galoshes – A Story About a Rainy Day, & Hopper and Wilson

And Red Galoshes

A Story About A Rainy Day, by Glenda Millard and Jonathan Bentley

With its gentle sing song cadence, this Australian picture book pairs rhyming poetry and everything fun and lovely to do outside on a rainy day, with red galoshes.  Perish the thought of staying indoors when there is so much magic outdoors.

Each page is a sweet invocation to whimsy and childhood imagination.  It’s a warm, inviting world waiting out there, with red galoshes.  You will be unable to help yourself from singing this book rather than simply reading it, and I challenge you not to feel happy after reading it to your children.  I can see them calling out ‘And red galoshes!’ every second page.

The illustrations are beautiful too.  You will be coveting them for a bedroom wall, Or is that just me? If I ever write my children’s book, I will be looking up Jonathan Bentley.  One can only dream ( and write three things at once).

Winner of Australian Publisher’s Association Book Design Award for Young Designer of the Year in 2012, this is just one of Glenda Millard’s prolific body of work, of which you can see more here

Hopper and Wilson, by Maria Van Lieshout

Hopper and Wilson are, respectively, a plush elephant toy and a yellow mouse.  They decide to follow their dreams to the end of the world.

Packing a red balloon with string, they jump into their paper boat and sail off, waving goodbye to the too little cactus that they have left behind.  They wish their wishes on a shooting star above, before a raging storm besets their flimsy boat, and Hopper is lost overboard.  Wilson is forlorn, lost and frightened, and when he spies a bird flying past with the string from the red ballon, he wonders if he will ever see Hopper again, until the sodden little elephant appears, atop his trusty balloon.

Though it seems a bit dark and scary for an interval, the story makes that most comforting of points, that everything will be okay, and Hopper and Wilson discover that the end (and beginning) of the world, where the best things are,  is closer than they thought.

You can read more about the author here

*By the way, if you were as utterly enchanted with the illustrations from Red Knit Cap Girl in my last reviews post, I’ve since discovered that you can purchase her illustrations from Etsy.  Go take a look, because they are something truly special.

 

Linking up with Grace at With Some Grace for #FYBF and Bron at Maxabella Loves for #TheWeekendRewind