The Great Doughnut Parade

Like the story of The Golden Goose, this fanciful picture book begins with a person who attracts an increasingly large crowd until he has spontaneously assembled a parade almost certain to make viewers laugh. Against a creamy blank backdrop, Billy marches along with a doughnut that, oddly, he has tied to his belt with a string. The doughnut attracts a chicken “who fancied herself a crumb of this thing”; it lures a cat, which incites a dog wearing a girl's dress, which brings a girl who runs along in her underpants. The characters and their activities multiply quickly without compromising their delicious particularity: “Adelaide Bead, who'd been doing her hair [and] bricklayers, horn players, painters and masons.” Bond's (Just Like a Baby ) watercolors are kinetic and limber, chock-full of playful details. As the parade grows, it gains ever more whimsical participants—“cloud catchers” carrying butterfly nets, “citizens... from the pages of history,” and even “Little May Pinker [with] things she had thought.” Children will have fun tracing the promenaders' progress in Bond's lively excursion. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)