How I Spent My Summer Vacation

July 7, 1997
A boy's school report tracks his imaginary adventures in the wild West, using playful rhyming verse; the result, according to PW, is "one rootin' tootin' tall tale." Ages 3-7.

July 3, 1995
Her spectacles perched on her nose and her hair coiffed in a Father Knows Best pompadour, Wallace Bleff's teacher looks on as the boy delivers an oral report on that classic topic, How I Spent My Summer Vacation. The classroom setting gives way to an expanse of Western plains, across which a locomotive train rumbles, bringing Wallace to visit his aunt. His parents have sent him there for a reason: "`Your imagination,' they said, `is getting too wild./ It will do you some good to relax for a while.'" It won't take kids long to realize that Wallace's imagination is as fertile as ever, as he tells of being captured by cowboys, who outfit him in spiffy Western garb and teach him all their "cowboy tricks." When ``Kid Bleff'' finally calls his aunt (from a phone booth comically plunked down in the middle of nowhere), she invites him to bring his pals to her house for a barbecue-Teague's (The Field Beyond the Outfield) boy buckaroo, however, still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Told in rollicking rhymed verse, this is one rootin' tootin' tall tale. Playful period illustrations brim with droll detail, including some laugh-out-loud funny expressions on animal faces. Ages 3-7.