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Synopsis
School is over! Hurry, pack up all your summer clothes (don’t forget your bathing suit!), load everything into the car, and find a spot in the backseat. Summer is about to begin.
The siblings in Marthe Jocelyn’s new picture book can’t wait to get to the cottage. The smell of pine needles, the first swim off the dock, playing summer games, and greeting their old friend, the rowboat Mayfly, are among the summer fun that young readers will identify with.
Delightfully illustrated with Jocelyn’s signature collages, Mayfly captures the incomparable excitement of the beginning of summer vacation and those seemingly endless days that follow, which children (and grown-ups) look forward to all year round.
Jean Boreen, Ph.D. - Children's Literature
Jocelyn has become well-known for her collage-style picture books, and this new addition lives up to Jocelyn's past creativity, from the texturing of the towels used at the beach to the dimensionality of trees, buildings and bugs caught in cans with holes punched in the tin tops. Readers could easily just focus on the pictures and be inspired to create their own stories. I found the actual story—one that follows a family from the end of the school year through their summer in the country—and its corresponding text a bit less enticing, simply because Jocelyn relies, for the most part, on short phrases rather than complete sentences to tell her story. While the choppy phrasing may help further the sense of action or movement, I found the text wanting. Additional readings made me realize that the text lacked a rhythm to move with the pictures, and while some readers may not be bothered by this, it was problematic for this reviewer. That said, this book will certainly remind young readers of the joys of the summer. 2004, Tundra Books, Ages 4 to 8.