  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 09/01/2014 Outside a food shack in India, a sparrow picks food from a diner’s plate. Then the bird spies a truck stacked with sacks of rice, one of which is torn open. The bird burrows inside as the truck heads into a crowded city and toward a dock where a ship awaits to take the rice on board. The sparrow has plenty to eat (rainstorms provide water) until the ship lands in a modern, gleaming port. Here toddler Edie enjoys lunching at the botanical garden with her grandparents. And look who else is there—the sparrow, nibbling crumbs from their table. The grandparents’ dog jumps at the bird, the bird knocks over Grandfather’s vanilla cone, and “Edie’s life changes forever” when the cone lands in her lap and she tastes ice cream for the first time. Despite the big idea that interconnections are unexpected and varied, the premise still seems thin. Not so the line and watercolor art with its energy and changing vistas, from teeming city to vast ocean to cozy family scene. Children will enjoy taking this trip and keeping their eyes on the hungry little bird. - Copyright 2014 Booklist. School Library Journal - 09/01/2014 K-Gr 2—A sparrow from a truck stop in India stows away in a sack of rice and ends up aboard a ship heading to a faraway port. Once in the big city, his curiosity leads him to a park where he encounters a family and a series of random occurrences that cause their dog to knock a vanilla ice cream cone onto the baby's lap, her first taste of the treat. Although Graham is clearly a very skilled illustrator, the disparate elements of this rather existential story highlighting the butterfly effect seem too esoteric to hold the interest of young readers. The unnamed sparrow is depicted with lovely realism in both the text and the ink and watercolor art but without much expression or personality. The book design offers a variety of perspectives along with brief snippets of text, including various size panels, spot art, single-page images, and full-page spreads. Despite the technical merit of tenderly sketched characters and dramatic spreads depicting the voyage with grandeur, this quirky but ephemeral picture book should be reserved for Graham's most ardent fans.—Erin Reilly-Sanders, Ohio State University, Columbus - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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