Bookshelf: Gone to the Beach

A reliable vein of children’s humor involves putting things in places they are not supposed to be, and this second book about “friendly and funny” Noni the Pony and her friends Coco and Dave, a dog and a cat, sends them to the beach, where laughs are to be had. They bring along “the ladies next door” — five cows, who slide down a sand dune quite ungracefully. The members of the crew take a swim — well, Noni and Dave do, while Coco lounges in a hammock-like fishing net and the cows wade in gingerly. With Lester’s smooth, natural rhymes, it’s a nearly perfect preschooler-friendly summer day, complete with simple illustrations as pleasing to look at as those colorful iced sugar cookies shaped like flowers or bells that canny shopkeepers keep next to the register.

The well-meaning puce-colored T. Rex from Idle’s “Tea Rex” and “Camp Rex” is off to the shore, where his improbably dainty hands are great for carrying a pail or a picnic basket, even if his enormous size creates problems, like a giant wave when he goes in the water. Idle, a Caldecott Honor winner, makes the words read like a sober manual for safe, responsible beach-going, while the pictures show a little girl and boy and their T. Rex friend facing some chaotic complications, like the seagull who makes off with their lunch. The visual storytelling is fast and funny, and Idle’s usual desert-toned palette and gently swaggering creatures give an interesting look to the beach.

The story begins even before the title page of this warmly satisfying book, capturing a family’s unabashed eagerness to get their short but precious summer beach vacation started. We see the five of them, plus dog, outside their suburban home loading up a minivan with all kinds of beach paraphernalia, then arriving at a blissfully isolated summer house, where unpacking — frustratingly — has to come before that first run down to the sand. Caswell’s peppy rhyming text is aimed at the youngest beach-lovers, with lots of lists. (“Marco Polo. Dives and dunks. Body surfing. Floating trunks.”) Bates’s dreamy watercolor art seems to drench the pages in the soft yellows, golds and oranges of the sweetest weeks of the year.

“Nothing changes. That’s why I like it,” says the grade-school-age narrator of this stylishly illustrated celebration of the annual week at the beach. Every year, she tells us, her family takes the “same roads” and arrives at the “same beach.” She calls it their cottage, but she knows it’s really a motel. In a confident voice, she narrates the unchanging routine once they get there. Describing the late-afternoon exodus from the water, she observes perceptively: “Everyone moves slowly. They leave the beach as the gulls return.” We witness one new turn of events: She makes a friend, a boy. They dig together in the sand and roast marshmallows at a bonfire on the beach. By the final page, she’s back home reading a postcard from her friend that says “See you next year,” and we can see how this modest family tradition has both anchored her and helped her grow. Stewart’s striking ’50s-style art picks up on the story’s air of nostalgia, with crayon-like black lines and washes of color combining muted tones with others that are almost fluorescent.