Hopscotch

The child who narrates this dreamlike telling begins the story focused on a beloved dog named Jackson who’s tied to a clothesline in the neighbor’s garden. The child envisions freeing Jackson (“All I need is a long ladder”), until one day the pooch disappears; only his collar remains. The emotional loss (“I will wait for him forever”) pervades what follows, as the child moves to a new town (“Jackson will never, ever find me!”) and enters a new landscape and school. Gay (the Stella and Sam series) conveys with perceptive power a contrast between the anxious fantasy of the child’s world (“Out of nowhere... a huge ogre appears”) and the reality of an adult’s (“Say hello to the crossing guard, Ophelia”). Memories of Jackson persist until at last the child is able to tell him “au revoir.” Sweetly styled watercolor, acrylic, wax crayon, and pencil images temper the story’s moments of loss, centering figures of varied skin tones that look like diminutive toys, while Gay’s writing zeroes in on the way the child, whose skin tone reflects the white of the book’s paper, uses the power they have to cope with change (“I draw an extra-long giant magic hopscotch”). Ages 3–6. (Aug.)