My Bike

by Byron Barton, Byron Barton (Illustrator)

Overview

Ride past trucks, buses, and cars.
Pedal past monkeys, tigers, and lions.
A bike can take you everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062371799
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/14/2015
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Byron Barton (1930–2023) was the creator of many picture books for young children, including My Car, Building a House, and The Little Red Hen.

Editorial Reviews

Escalating surprises [with] a high-wire climax. . . . A natural for group storytimes, though plenty of single tots will enjoy seeing Tom’s seemingly quotidian world suddenly transformed.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“This latest installment in Barton’s transportation series may be the best one yet. Which is saying a lot.” — Horn Book (starred review)

“Brightly illustrated . . . reminiscent of children’s paintings in its broad lines, startling colors, and simplified shapes . . . With a surprising diversion toward the circus, and a twist back to cycles at the end, this will please fans of [Barton’s] previous books and young bike-lovers as well.” — Booklist (starred review)

Praise for My Car: “Simply wonderful.” — Booklist (starred review)

“With bright primary colors, simple bold shapes, and the briefest of texts, Barton introduces Tom …[who] is a captivating and first-rate entertainer; so is the creator of this preschooler-perfect picture book.” — Horn Book (starred review)

“Tom and his bike pull together an entire community in what adds up to a prized preschool trilogy from Byron Barton.” — Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

This latest installment in Barton’s transportation series may be the best one yet. Which is saying a lot.

Horn Book (starred review)

Brightly illustrated . . . reminiscent of children’s paintings in its broad lines, startling colors, and simplified shapes . . . With a surprising diversion toward the circus, and a twist back to cycles at the end, this will please fans of [Barton’s] previous books and young bike-lovers as well.

Booklist (starred review)

Tom and his bike pull together an entire community in what adds up to a prized preschool trilogy from Byron Barton.

Shelf Awareness

12/01/2014
PreS-Gr 1—In this tale of a boy and his bike, Tom rides past cars, trucks, and buses to his place of employment: a circus, where he dons face paint and becomes a clown. Barton once more shows great intuition for what appeals to children. The book is brimming with elements that will keep kids turning pages: crowds of people, highways crammed with vehicles, a diagram of bike parts, a circus that includes elephants and cavorting monkeys, and—an Easter egg for fans—some old friends from previous Barton books making appearances. Brightly colored, flat, digitally created illustrations have the joyfully childlike quality and soothing repetitiveness of his My Bus (2014) and My Car (2001, both HarperCollins). Though simple (a face is depicted with two circles for eyes and a semicircle for a mouth), these cheery images contain enough detail to catch the attention of very young readers, who will enjoy pointing out the single cat sitting among a large group of people watching Tom perform or a mother scolding her daughter outside the circus tent. The accessible, short sentence structure ("I put on my uniform." "I put on my makeup."), coupled with a large font, gives this book a wide audience. It is an ideal option for storytime and potentially a primer for those making their first forays into independent reading. A delight.—Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

★ 2014-12-06
Barton (My Car, 2001; My Bus, 2014) wheels out another conveyance—but sends this one rolling past a set of escalating surprises to a high-wire climax.Following introductions and a view of his bicycle with its major parts labeled, Tom climbs aboard and pedals off "to work." He sets up expectations of a perfectly ordinary ride by passing predictable parades of trucks, then buses, then cars and finally "lots of people." These are knocked askew as successive page turns show him going on to pass…monkeys, then acrobats, then caged tigers and lions. His commute finishing at a tent, Tom then steps inside to don a loudly decorated "uniform," paint his face with clown makeup, climb a ladder and go "to work // on my unicycle. / Look! No hands!" Rendered in saturated colors with thick, slightly wobbly digital strokes, the illustrations are characteristically simple enough to decipher easily either close up or at a distance. Lines of equally legible text are printed in a bold sans serif, split into short phrases and printed against sharply contrasting backgrounds. A natural for group storytimes, though plenty of single tots will enjoy seeing Tom's seemingly quotidian world suddenly transformed. (Picture book. 2-4)

Kirkus Reviews