The Relatives Came

The relatives' station wagon: it smelled like a real car, looked like a rainbow, and was roomy enough for a crowd.
Lucky! Because a big crowd in all shapes and sizes piled into that old wagon at four o'clock one summer morning and piled out of it the next day at their relatives' place on the north side of the mountains. All in good moods.
The visitors settled in everywhere throughout the house, laughing and making music and hugging everyone from the kitchen to the front room. And they stayed for weeks.
Cynthia Rylant's words and Stephen Gammell's pictures take warm delight in the time the relatives came -- when two sides of a family made one roomy middle.

Cynthia Rylant is the author of more than one hundred books for young people, including beloved Henry and Mudge, Motor Mouse, and Mr. Putter & Tabby series. Her novel Missing May received the Newbery Medal. She lives in Oregon.

Stephen Gammell is the beloved illustrator of more than fifty books for children, including Song and Dance Man by Karen Ackerman, which received the Caldecott Medal, and two Caldecott Honor Books: The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, Where the Buffaloes Begin by Olaf Baker, and The Secret Science Project That Almost Ate Our School by Judy Sierra. Mr. Gammell lives with his wife, Linda, in St. Paul, Minnesota.