Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/01/2014 PreS-K—In the third engaging tale about Zoe and her younger sister, Addie, the girls and their mother visit a playground. Zoe's highly tuned imagination soon turns the small park and play equipment into a wild jungle. As a brave and undaunted explorer following the illusory "Addiebeast," the child searches by using her binoculars, swinging on vines, riding a wild boar, and braving a crocodile-infested river. For each of the last five minutes of playtime, their mother counts down the minutes left. Every time she calls out, the siblings are immediately brought back to reality for a few seconds, as shown in the colorful, full-page pictures, and then swiftly return to their hunter-and-hunted game. Charming pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations reveal to readers both the lush green jungle teeming with wild animals and bright flowers, as well as the impressive playground just ripe for imagining. Wonderful vocabulary introduces such words as "glimpses," "stealthy," "relentless," "ingenuity," and "unfathomable." Children will enjoy watching Zoe and Addie play their game while also searching for the Addiebeast's polka-dotted "hide," thus allowing them to take part in the pursuit. Use this title with Peggy Rathman's 10 Minutes Till Bedtime (Putnam, 1998) for another countdown story of a child with a deadline.—Maryann H. Owen, Children's Literature Specialist, Mt. Pleasant, WI - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.