• Home
  • about
    • blog
      • Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer
      • #DinnerwithDragonwagon
      • Deep Feast
      • #WidowhoodWednesday
    • media: interviews / profiles / articles
    • radio / video
    • publications list
  • books
    • cookbooks
    • children’s books
    • novels / fiction
    • poetry
    • reviews of CD’s books
  • Mentoring
    • testimonials
  • contact
  • “Is that your real name?”
    • Subscribe
  • Workshops, Classes & Events
    • Tuesdays with Crescent WINTER-SPRING 2021

Crescent Dragonwagon

Annie Flies the Birthday Bike

Spread the love
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

 

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1993

Despite all her dreams of getting a bicycle for her birthday, Annie soon discovers that it takes more than dreams to learn how to ride it.


Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 2– The joy of learning to ride a bike, from fear of failure to tentative hope to triumphant mastery, is effectively captured in this sunny book. Young Annie decides she has had enough of her trike. She wants to “fly down the hill” like the boys she sees on their bicycles. On her birthday, her parents give her a blue bike without training wheels. Annie is chagrined when “. . . it feels impossible/ to fly, to even try/ to move a little.” Her mother promises that it will get easier. The child keeps at it and, after a week, she’s riding. Because she narrates the story, Annie’s feelings are direct and immediate. Told in free verse, some lines are short, others long; some have inside verse, others no rhyme or meter. Reading the narrative aloud can be tricky, but it is effective and fun. McCully’s familiar ink-and-watercolor illustrations are rich and informative. Personalities are enhanced through facial expressions and body language. Using a full palette of greens, the artist makes Annie’s upper-middle-class neighborhood appear lush and appealing. Although the setting is affluent, the book’s theme is broad. –Nancy Seiner, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Small girl yearns for and gets bike, takes a few days to find her balance (with the help of a neighbor boy, apparently hired by her dad), six days after her birthday has done “nearly six feet” on her own–but after four more days is off on an independent outing. She takes a tumble going downhill (kindly old Mr. Volk, who sees her fall, bandages her bleeding knee), but the pain doesn’t matter: Annie can ride now. The author relates the familiar scenario in irregularly rhyming free-form verse whose cadence artfully reflects Annie’s shaky start and her exhilaration when she finally soars free. On broad, colorful spreads that nicely accommodate the biking action, McCully depicts a comfortable neighborhood with large, well-spaced houses (and virtually no cars); more important, she conveys emotions, even the subtler ones like apprehension, encouragement, or quiet pride, with a deftly unassuming economy of line. (Picture book. 4-8) — Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 32 pages
  • Publisher: Atheneum (March 31, 1993)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0027331555
  • ISBN-13: 978-0027331554
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8 x 0.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces

Read Aloud with Crescent and Mark

NOT A LITTLE MONKEY, by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrted by Michelle Chessaree

"So, the little girl climbed into the big waste-basket and waited." ' Oh no,' said her mother, ' we don't want to throw you away.'"There are many ways to express love and the need for attention. Here, a busy mother and her just-a-bit naughty little girl tease each other affectionately — the little girl making her point without even uttering a word.That's today's story time — read aloud by the author's daughter at Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops, with Mark Graff's "text support" and discussion."Just right for two-to-fours, the humor of this true-to-life story of a mischievous little girl who blocks her mother's attempts to clean house will elicit giggles from the lollipop set." Kirkus Reviews

Posted by Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops on Thursday, June 4, 2020

Read Aloud with Crescent

Read Aloud with Crescent

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, photograph by Tom McCorkle, Washington Post

March Offering

March Offering

Bean By Bean Cookbooks

#DeepFeast Recipes

More Posts from this Category

Dinner with Dragonwagon

More Posts from this Category

 for children:

A NAPPA Gold Winner
NAPPA


"... like a warm luminescent blanket at bedtime... softly lulling." -- New York Times


"(With) weary animals, Dragonwagon offers an “alphabet of ways to sleep,” smoothly working in some alliteration..."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Available at:


Crescent Dragonwagon page style=

read aloud with Crescent Dragonwagon

Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

Available for Purchase

Copyright © 2021 · Darling theme by Restored 316