OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Jorey Hurely studied art history at Princeton, received her law degree at Stanford, and studied design at FIT. She worked as a textile designer for Hable Construction in New York City and is now based in San Francisco, where she lives with her husband and their two small children. Nest is her first book.
A day at the seaside is a joyous adventure for the Labrador retriever protagonist of this restricted-vocabulary picture book. Each spread has a verb describing the pooch's action as she chases after her beloved red ball; fetch when it's tossed, search when she's hunting for the ball bobbing on the waves, splash when she paddles out toward it, etc. As the dog pursues the prize, she engages with local wildlife, passing a moment with some seagulls and sporting with some dolphins, until finally she brings the ball back to her beloved little girl for an inevitable eager again? While there's plenty of readaloud hay to be made of this (a guess the word challenge would elicit some energetic participation), it's beginning readers who will really appreciate the easy gamesmanship of figuring out the single word per spread and the genuine story behind the spare text. Digital art has the smooth solidity of cut-paper collage shapes, especially in the sandy figure of the dog, whose poses are well-observed authentic canine moves...the surprise discovery of various marine animals will provide audi- ences/readers with added diversion. This is rife with language arts potential, and it'll make a lively next step after Sullivan's one-word wonder, Ball (BCCB 5/13). DS--Bulletin
