The Story of Red Rubber Ball

The Story of Red Rubber Ball by Constance Levy, illus. by Hiroe Nakata, expands on a poem of Levy's that poem that appeared in her 1991 I'm Going to Pet a Worm Today. Different creatures interact with a ball (ostensibly lost by a boy who despondently sits on his stoop in the opening spread), but none can find a use for it. In Nakata's watercolors, each animal shows up in the illustration that precedes its moment in the spotlight; tiny background details, unrelated to the overall story, should pique children's imaginations as well.