Bus! Stop!

Yang (Puzzlehead) dedicates his graphically inventive book to “all the nice bus drivers who waited as I ran toward the bus.” Alas, such is not the good fortune of his young hero, who has just missed his bus to school (hence the title). Oh well, there’s always another bus, right? But the vehicles that subsequently show up don’t seem to be headed to school. Triangular creatures use their propeller heads to board one that rides on tall, spindly legs; there’s a covered wagon bus for cowpokes; and one that resembles a bounce house holds passengers who look and move like big rubber balls. As reality becomes increasingly fungible and funny (an ocean liner pulls up at one point), the boy finally hops on a bus that looks like a cross between a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon and a spaceship. The book’s low-slung format echoes the horizontal shape of the buses, the text’s word balloons, and the long stretches of city streets, and Yang’s stylized, offbeat characters and “buses” give this story of transportation lost and found a quirky universality. Ages 2–5. Agent: David Goldman, David Goldman Agency. (Mar.)