Bounce by Doreen Cronin, Scott Menchin (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

Bounce a ball right off your hands. Bounce it off your toes. Try to bounce a beach ball on the tip of your nose! Doreen Cronin and Scott Menchin, who had toddlers all over America jiggling with Wiggle, invite them now to hop, leap, pounce, and bounce to their hearts' content (though not on couches!). Because, after all, it's better to have bounced and bumped than never to have bounced at all.

Publishers Weekly

In this charming follow-up to Wiggle, Cronin, Menchin and their doggie hero guide readers in life lessons as a series of literal ups and downs. "If you bounce into a puddle," the chipper canine says as he leaps off a lamppost à la Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, "it's best to bounce in boots." The author completes the rhyme on the following spread, which finds the pooch with a spring in his step in the produce department: "If you mustbounce in the market,/ it's best notto bounce in fruits!" Parents will appreciate the words of caution when bouncing gets out of hand ("Bouncing with your best friendis called a bouncing double./ Bouncing on the couch is called bigbouncing trouble"; Menchin shows the two airborne with only the couch's back visible, then tumbling to the floor with only the furniture's feet showing). The artist works in bold ink outlines and bright, even digital colors, and uses whimsical photographic images here and there for comic punctuation. Cronin and Menchin build to a bravura finish, with an allusion to love: "A bounce can turn into a bump,/ a bump into a fall./ But it's better to have bouncedand bumped.../ than neverto have bounced at all!" (the long-eared hero sports a plethora of bandages, but also a wistful smile). Readers young and old will likely enjoy bouncing through these pages. Ages 1-4. (May)

Marge Loch-WoutersCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

PreS
The frenetic pooch featured in Wiggle (S & S, 2005) is back with a decided bounce in its step. Readers are invited to jump, hop, leap, and bounce balls off their noses and toes along with the playful pooch. Rhymes weave in and out of the pen-and-ink and digitally colored spreads. The cartoon art is eye-catching and as playful as the text, featuring photographed objects like curtains, cabbages, and caps. A final bump and fall brings the silliness to a satisfying conclusion, "But it's better to have bounced and bumped...than never to have bounced at all!" Preschoolers will relish the fun and respond to the infectious energy of this title.

Kirkus Reviews

In her bright paean to the joys of vertical movement, Cronin's rhyming text is not just an invitation but an exhortation to young readers to bounce. The canine protagonist, in a red baseball cap worn backwards, follows a bunny through a cabbage patch. There's also a frog, ballerinas, bees, bats and several other bouncers in all manner of locales. The bouncing dog gets a little respite when he lands in a kangaroo pouch. When he bounces too high, this turns into a bump and then a fall. At the end, covered in bandages, he concludes that it's still "better to have bounced and bumped than never to have bounced at all." Cronin comes up with an admirably broad spectrum of bouncers and bounce-upons, all enthusiastically nearly springing off the page. The bold simplicity of both the text and Menchin's illustrations, rendered in pen and ink with digital color, should appeal to very young readers-and be within their reach. (Picture book. 3-6)

Product Details

• ISBN: 0641906455
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641906459
• Format: Hardcover, 40pp
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Pub. Date: May 2007
• Edition Description: Bargain
• Sales Rank: 5,154
• Age Range: 4 to 8