Annie Flies the Birthday Bike

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.