A Picnic in the Sun: Bertie and Friends Hit the Road

by Christiane Duchesne, Marianne Ferrer (Illustrator)

Overview

An unpredictable musical tale that celebrates friendship, featuring 18 songs! Bertie and his buddies never get bored with each other… except for the time when it rained for four straight weeks! That’s when they decided to repair an old boat and head for dryer lands: a sunny place atop the Blue Mountain. The journey to the faraway destination won’t be easy, but with a little help from newly made animal friends, they make it to the summit, which happens to be the best place in the whole world for a picnic! An imaginative musical tale interspersed with original and traditional songs. In addition to the illustrated story, this picture book is accompanied by a CD (and a unique digital download code) with recordings of the narrated story and 18 songs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782925108696
Publisher:	The Secret Mountain
Publication date:	09/01/2021
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	11.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	AD950L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

Editorial Reviews

2021-06-29
Four cohabiting friends take a journey to escape 100 days of rain.

The gentle creatures dress, act, and talk like kind, friendly people—and sport antlers and vaguely mouselike silhouettes. Their light-brown, white-freckled faces blend harmoniously with the muted, dreamlike landscapes. The plot is episodic; after the smallest friend, Minnie, has “the most fabulous idea in her whole life,” the friends go through a variety of adventures as they pursue a sunny picnic on top of the Blue Mountain. They initially ride horses that resemble unicorns, after which they use tools to turn a shipwrecked pirate ship into a veritable ark, collecting animals as they go. The story is long and tedious, crowded with hyperbolic words, exclamation points, and breathlessly patronizing expressions such as “Oh my” and “Oh yes.” The whimsical illustrations cannot save the verbose text. Reading the story is further complicated by the 19 interspersed sets of song lyrics from the accompanying CD. The CD includes a male voice reading the story along with mostly original ditties incorporating various styles of world music, including instruments plus several different, pleasant voices, into short, often hypnotic, songs. Single song tracks can be useful for encouraging movement or naptime with little ones; playing the text-plus-songs or reading the book aloud is unlikely to keep a child engrossed. Ironically, some of the best writing is in the lyrics.

Disappointing. (Picture book/music. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews