One Windy Wednesday

On one very windy day, the quack gets blown right out of the duck, and Bonnie Bumble has to struggle in order to simply stand up, in a humorous tale of a rather odd and extremely windy day.

PreSchool-So hard does the wind blow across Bonnie Bumble's farmyard that the duck's "quack!" ends up attached to the lamb, the lamb's "baaa!" to the pig, etc. In Craig's windswept watercolors, the noises are set into dialogue balloons with actual strings attached. Bonnie, a stubby child in patched red overalls, industriously gathers and reattaches the sounds to their rightful owners. Beginning readers and even pre-readers will appreciate the fundamental silliness here, but may wonder why the animal sounds are blown about at random rather than downwind, or how the rising breeze in the last scene can almost bowl Bonnie over, but leaves the animals, and their balloons, unaffected. Despite its appeal, this story earns low marks for logical consistency. Stick with Charles Causley's "Quack!" Said the Billy-goat, (Lippincott, 1986; o.p.).
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Just how windy is the Wednesday in question? It's so windy that all the sounds get blown out of the farm animals ("It blew the oink right out of the pig. It blew the baa right out of the lamb"). Soon the cow is oinking and the duck is mooing, leaving it up to little Bonnie Bumble in her patched pink overalls to put everything right again: "She tied the oink back onto the pig. She knit the baa back onto the lamb." Root (Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble) and Craig (the Angelina Ballerina books) work in sync as they bring to life the full force of this very blustery day. The concise text (written with the help of Root's 10-year-old daughter) is as cheery and unpretentious as Craig's primarily pastel watercolor and ink cartoons. A sure bet to invite audience participation. Ages 2-5.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 3^-5. In a simple funny story of barnyard disorder, a strong wind blows and blows and mixes everything up. It blows the quack right out of the duck, the moo right out of the cow, the oink right out of the pig, the baa right out of the lamb. Then the duck moos, the cow oinks, the lamb quacks . . . Bonnie Bumble works to put everything right on the farm and hitches the right animal to the right sound. She gets everything back in order--and then, on the last page, the dog starts to meow. Craig's ink-and-watercolor cartoon illustrations capture the silliness and the mess with droll humor. After the surprise at the end, kids will go back and see that the dog and cat have been there, unnoticed but part of the chaotic action, all the time. Hazel Rochman