Beach
PreSchool-Grade 3–As the day begins, the beach is empty, waiting to be filled. Cooper opens with a gorgeous stretch of sand in sun-flecked, amber-white watercolors, bounded by a sea so darkly blue that it seems still half-asleep. In the following pages, he tells the story, mainly in detailed splashes of paint, of the people and things that transform the quiet area into a lively spot. Readers will enjoy the affectionate portraits of swimmers, kite-flyers, sunbathers, seagulls, and barking dogs. A struggle with an inner tube or a beach umbrella, the people who go into the water but forget that they are still wearing their glasses, the clouds that look like spilled popcorn: here, as in life, it's the little things that snag readers' attention. Cooper's portrayal of a day at the shore is generous with such minutiae; his fondness for his subject is evident and infectious. As the beach once again empties at the end of the story, it's tempting to return to the first page, to a hundred possible activities at the shore–none of which is more earthshaking than a toppled sandcastle.–Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NYCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.