Follow the Line to School

PreS-Gr 2—This book has all of the ingredients for "dialogic reading." It is practically a user's guide for how an adult and child can engage in conversation while reading together. As with Ljungkvist's other "Follow the Line" books, it takes readers through a familiar setting—school—and asks youngsters to find, count, or reply to prompts, such as, "Fred is the class pet. Can you guess what kind of animal he is?" The answers aren't always as easy as they might seem. This particular book is great for familiarizing pre-kindergarteners with all of the possibilities of an engaging school environment, or for talking about similarities and differences between the artist's images and a child's current institution. As readers follow the line from page to page, they encounter areas that may be confined to a classroom, or may have separate quarters, such as the art, music, and eating areas. The clever mixed-media artwork is brimming with familiar artifacts and tools, yet Ljungkvist's clean-cut Scandinavian style and simplicity of composition keep the pages from being visually overwhelming.—Maggie Chase, Boise State University, ID

Readers tour Ljungkvist's bustling digital collage illustrations with a continuous black line that wends its way through every page, taking the shape of words and various objects. The line snakes through the school's front door and enters a colorful classroom while the text asks questions about the items pictured. There's something of interest everywhere; even the cafeteria food looks yummy.