Publication Date: June 1, 2009 | Age Range: 4 - 8 years
A fun day-in-the-life of a school bus and his road-hugging buddies
Get ready for a rip-roaring, rhyming ride that celebrates all things drivin' with a special spotlight on a kid's four-wheeled best buddy--his school bus! When you're a kid, your school bus can be your very best friend. Morning, noon, and nighttime, too, that golden buddy is at your service. Ready to drive you and your friends to and from school.
And in-between those golden-bus moments, there are other vehicles who drive around town doing what they do best--sweeping, crunching, watching, creeping! Here is an in-your-face read-aloud that is bound to become a modern classic.
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Grade 1–3—Rhyming text in the first and third person relates the daylong job of the big yellow vehicles as they head out into traffic, pick up passengers, drop them at school, provide transportation for trips, and deliver children back home at day's end. The repeated phrase "I'm your bus" injects a personal touch, as does the integration of children's names into the rhyme. Polenghi's digital media illustrations have bold colors and strong black lines, and his jovial anthropomorphizing of the oft-unheralded school bus brings a friendly demeanor to the pages. While there may not be a heavy child demand for books about these vehicles, they are a daily presence in children's lives whether in cities, suburbs, small towns, or rural areas, and this picture book may lift appreciation of them.—Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA END
About the Author
Marilyn Singer is the author of over 80 books for children in many genres, including poetry collections, nonfiction, mysteries, and novels. She has won several Children's Choice and Parents' Choice Awards, as well as a Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book prize for Creature Carnival. Her picture book CITY LULLABYE was recently cited by Time magazine as one of the Top Ten Children's Books for 2007. She lives in Washington, Connecticut, and Brooklyn, New York, where there are many school buses in her neighborhood.
Evan Polenghi is the designer/illustrator for The Learning Maestros, a children’s music publishing company. Evan has also created designs for Gap Kids and Baby Gap. His illustrations have appeared in the Chicken Socks book EYE FIND, and have been part of many popular advertising campaigns, including print media for Toshiba and American Express. He lives in New York City.
Marilyn Singer was born in the Bronx (New York City) on October 3, 1948 and lived most of her early life in N. Massapequa (Long Island), NY. She attended Queens College, City University of New York, and for her junior year, Reading University, England. She holds a B.A. in English from Queens and an M.A. in Communications from New York University.
In 1974, after teaching English in New York City high schools for several years, she began to write - initially film notes, catalogues, teacher's guides, and film strips. Then, one day, when she was sitting in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, she penned a story featuring talking insect characters she'd made up when she was eight. Encouraged by the responses she got, she wrote more stories, and in 1976, her first book, The Dog Who Insisted He Wasn't, was published by E.P.Dutton & Co.
Since then, Marilyn has published over eighty books for children and young adults. Her genres are many and varied, including realistic novels, fantasies, non-fiction, fairy tales, picture books, mysteries and poetry. She likes writing many different kinds of books because it's challenging and it keeps her from getting bored.
Marilyn currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband Steve; their standard poodle Oggi, seen in the home page photo; a cat named August ; two collared doves named Jubilee and Holiday; and a starling that says, "Hi. How are you? Sweet Birdie. Okay!" Her interests include ballroom/Latin dancing, dog training, reading, hiking, bird-watching, gardening, playing computer adventure games, and going to the movies and the theatre. She's also a major Star Trek fan.
Marilyn is the former host of the AOL Children's Writers Chat and currently co-hosts the Poetry Blast at various conferences. Visit her web site: www.marilynsinger.net.
I just finished reading this book and thought it was really cute! This would make a great gift for a child who is going off to school for the first time, or riding the bus for the first time! A neat idea for a back-to-school gift!
One of my kids picked this out at the library. I wasn't expecting much but it's a really cute books and both my 4 year old daughter and 1.5 year old son LOVE it. They both ask to read it every day and shout out "BUS!!" every time I read the line "I'm your ...". I don't think it's quite 5 star material and I don't see this becoming a classic children's book, but it's definitely a fun book for toddlers and preschoolers.
I think the concept is great and I like the "I'm your bus" phrase throughout. It's just a bit awkward in places and I think she could have come up with something better pretty easily. The illustrations though are wonderful - vibrant and appealing to kids. And of five books I bought at the Scholastic book fair, this is both my three year olds' favorite. So, a solid 4 star book.
