Red Car, Red Bus

Working in her trademark medium of collage, Steggall (Busy Boats) follows a mother and child who are helped by a kindhearted stranger when they miss the bus. But there’s much more: her focus is on the whole landscape, not only on these particular characters, and each spread offers many small-scale dramas to discover and pore over (the book’s wide, squat trim size plays up the panoramic effect). A car and a bus traveling through the outskirts of town (“Red car, red bus”) are joined by more vehicles as they approach the shopping district (“Orange van, yellow van, yellow car, red car, red bus”); they pass houses being painted, bus passengers waiting in line, and pedestrians getting rained on. Steggall renders the rain with microscopically small pieces of newsprint all spiking down at the same angle, a striking effect. Her ability to capture human gesture is remarkable, too: though her human figures are tiny, the mother can clearly be seen doubled over with the effort of her unsuccessful sprint to the bus stop. It’s a marvelous celebration of ordinary life, the kind that lends itself to repeated readings. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)