The Bus Ride - Hardcover

... A deceptively eventful picture book ...--The Wall Street Journal

With small, telling visual details and evocative wordless spreads, DuBuc (?The Lion and the Bird, ? ?In Front of My House?) creates a singular mood of everyday enchantment.--The New York Times

This unique book will be enjoyed again and again by readers ages 3 to 7.--The Calgary Herald

This is a story all about the journey itself, and it's a treat. Readers share in the girl's wonder at the sights she sees and creatures she meets on the bus.--Kirkus Reviews

This benign narrative enacted in gentle drawings with subdued hues and a bus-appropriate elongated landscape format will bear repeated re-readings and re-lookings.--The Horn Book Magazine

The illustrations are fantastic---in multiple meanings of the word: imaginary, improbable, whimsical, and superb.--School Library Journal

The drawings are lovely and colourful, both delicately executed and full of bold intensity. Dubuc has managed to create a whole world inside the bus, a universe that we imagine existed in good old days ...--Montreal Review of Books

The Bus Ride will help readers learn about independence and trying new things.--CM Magazine

Kids need to have adventures. But a prerequisite for adventure is the need to put yourself, however slightly, at risk. That's what inspired Frida the most about this book.--The Globe and Mail

Good for imagination and travel, this merry bus ride has glimmers of "Little Red Riding Hood" but is entirely itself.--Kirkus Reviews - Starred Review

?This is the first time I'm taking the bus by myself. Mom packed me a snack --- and had me bring my sweater in case I get cold.? But Mom likely didn't imagine the adventure her little girl would have as she rides to her grandmother's house in this sweet picture book. While the bus is taking her down the streets, through a forest and into a pitch-black tunnel, the little girl encounters an assortment of animal characters who enliven her journey, including a goat who offers her a flower from a bouquet, a wolf child with whom she happily shares her cookies and a fox who attempts to pickpocket a beaver. Adding to the fun are lots of running visual gags, such as the changing headlines on the newspaper that hides one passenger's face, a sleeping sloth who mysteriously appears in different seats without ever having woken up and a nervous-looking turtle whose head and arms pop in and out of its shell.
The interior of the bus covers each two-page spread, and award-winning author-illustrator Marianne Dubuc uses subtle colors and tiny details to draw in youngsters to the activity happening there. This book offers a potentially multilayered classroom reading experience: there is the terrific main story of the girl's trip, but there are also any number of mini stories playing out at the same time with each of the other characters. It would work beautifully as a jumping-off point for children to do some imaginary storytelling of their own.