A concert in the park

A child brings a harmonica to the park to take advantage of the perfect kind of day for playing music outside. At the woodsy edge of the park he encounters a rabbit playing a grand piano and asks to join her. With successive page-turns, more animals arrivea bear with a guitar, a squirrel with a violin, a monkey with a tambourineeach introduced with the onomatopoetic description of the sound his or her instrument makes (brrinnn, brrinnn, brrinnnwiii, wiii, wiiitann, tatta, tann). Cleverly, the pages on the right side physically increase in width, reflecting the increase in the sound the combined instruments make. Finally, a sad bird is invited to lend her voice (Oh, yesId love to sing. Thank you for giving me a chance!), and a concert is performed, with an appreciative audience of animals cheering from the forest. When the child returns home, his mother compliments the music she had heard from afar, but he knows hell never be able to explain [his] new musical friends. Yamadas deliberate telling lays out the story with matter-of-fact clarity, yet the sweet, blocky paintings, with cuddly-looking animals playing more realistically rendered instruments, capture the essential fantasy in their insouciant tone. At storys (and days) end, the child dreams of returning to the park for a repeat concert. Closing endpapers picture and label the musical instruments played at the concert in the park. thom barthelmess March/April 2019 p 72(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.