Hats off for the Fourth of July - Hardcover

Newcomer Miller's artwork provides the fireworks for this homage to the Independence Day parade, set in the Massachusetts seaside town of Chatham. Ziefert (When I First Came to This Land) describes the goings-on in stagnant verse that belies the gaiety of the proceedings. The predictable rhyming couplets suffer from occasionally strained rhyme schemes (town/around; boom/soon) and faltering rhythm ("Cowboys on horses yell out loud./ We all shout backDwhat a happy crowd"). Against solid-colored backgrounds, Miller whimsically tweaks traditional proportion, creating some stylized, angular images of people on unicycles, stilts and motorcycles. He peppers his paintings with playful particulars: a pooch purloins a twirler's baton, a uniformed George Washington look-alike appears in the crowd and one onlooker holds a pet rabbit on his lap. With images of a horse, a cow and even a clown straddling the turn of a page, the artist creates the feeling of an endless parade of marchers. This volume may well find an appreciative local audience, since the collaborators capture the flavor of this Cape Cod vacation spot (spectators cheer a car transformed into the shape of a whale; a lighthouse beacon pierces the night sky while fireworks explode overhead), yet the excitement of this holiday radiates more universally and warmly in Happy Birthday, America! (reviewed on p. 94). Ages 4-7. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The business of a parade is to march along with style and zip and knock the socks off those who watch. Add the excitement of the nameless narrator in Ziefert’s (First He Made the Sun, see above, etc.) rhythmic, rhymed Fourth of July parade to first-time illustrator Miller’s humor, and readers receive a down-home parade that means business. The book captures summer’s spirit, from the shorts and T-shirts of the watchers to the sun-blocking card on the balloon-seller’s nose and the winding-down, post-parade, nighttime fireworks. Parade units pass by in full-bleed spreads, the last unit leaving off one edge, the next nosing into place on the other, pictures that echo the anticipation expressed in text: “Who will be the next to come?” It's all here, what those lucky enough to experience parades in small towns or active urban neighborhoods know. There’s the twirler who drops her baton; the unleashed dog who picks it up; the cowboys who’ve recruited a kid to clean up after their horses and the stilt-walker (there’s always a stilt-walker!). Then there’s the big kids’ float and the one done up by adults; the little kids’ marching band and the one from the high school, not to mention the antique cars; the motorcycles; the Little Leaguers and the kids on bicycles rag-tagging parade’s end. Hats off indeed to this splendid parade of a book. (Picture book. 2-5) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.