Ten-Gallon Bart and the Wild West Show
Kindergarten-Grade 3—The former sheriff of Dog City, introduced inTen-Gallon Bart(Marshall Cavendish, 2006), realizes that retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, he's bored. So when Buffalo Chip's Wild West Show comes to town, he decides to enter the bull-riding contest. The only problem? He has to wake the bull up first. Crummel slips into a Western dialect and setting immediately, making readers want to drawl as they read the story. Listeners will smile at Ten-Gallon Bart's effort to wake the bull, and will laugh out loud at the solution. The illustrations are rich with texture and pattern. Donohue's method of cutting and pasting paper makes the various characters pop out from the backgrounds. The art also lends movement to the scenes of Bart trying to ride the wild (and angry) bull. This story will keep kids cheering for Ten-Gallon Bart, especially when he bests the beast and goes back to retirement…for now.—Susan E. Murray, Glendale Public Library, AZCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.