Ride Beside Me

“My helmet is on, and/ the morning is bright”—and it seems like everybody the child narrator knows is riding some kind of cycle in this on-the-move chronicle of a largely self-propelled public. Setting out with Mom pedaling, a child in a bike seat notices a neighbor on a tall cycle and a mail carrier on a recumbent number. A pal waves from a bike pulled by a crowded tandem bicycle (“There’s Petunia, my classmate. She’s one kid of four./ They all ride the same bike, and there’s room for one more”). As a variety of cycles take to the streets, ridden by individuals of various skin tones, text lightly thumbs its nose at various internal combustion vehicles and their rather grim drivers (“I bet they wish they/ could be going this fast!”). Throughout, flat, bright gouache illustrations by Knisley (You Are New) largely focus on the growing, zooming group, conveying a sense of community and civic unanimity shown through handlebars, pedals, and wheels. “It’s like we’re a club,/ or a party... a sea!” says the exhilarated narrator, “an ocean of bicycles,/ all around me.” Ages 3–6. Agent: Holly Bemiss, Susan Rabiner Literary. (Feb.)