Blue Rider

February 1, 2018

K-Gr 2-Colors and shapes dominate the imaginative romp of a city girl. The wordless story opens with a child peering out of her high-rise apartment. She ventures outdoors into mobs of busy people of all ages, and comes upon an abandoned blue book featuring a jumping horse on its cover. She embraces it, takes it home, and reads it in her stark bedroom. Valerio gives viewers a close-up of the steed with rainbow mane and tail. The heroine imagines the horse flying over the city, dropping brightly colored shapes across the sky like confetti. As the horse speeds up on following spreads, the shapes grow larger and more varied until they finally block out the horse entirely. Several pages follow, each overflowing with abstract blocks that finally release the horse, with the child on its back. At last, she is shown asleep in her room, which is now transformed with the shapes and colors she's dreamed up. The contrast of the city's earth tones and repetitive shapes deftly contrasts with the bliss of brightness that comes later. VERDICT Art teachers should employ this for student inspiration. -Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 15, 2018
In the double-page spread immediately following the endpapers, the gazes of readers shift from a cityscape to a pale girl peering out of a skyscraper. Her story unfolds in wordless double-page spreads rendered in pen, colored pencil, acrylics, and collage. Initially the palette--including skin tone--is limited to dull blues, grays, creams, tans, and oranges. This lends a somewhat surreal effect to the sidewalk crowd, most of whom are distracted with screens or headphones. As the child steps outside, her blue clothing becomes brighter, and a related shade seems to be seeping from wall to pavement. She spies a book with a blue horse on the cover and picks it up, smiling. Back in her drab room, the animal leaps off the page into the sky, scattering a rainbow of torn paper shapes across the pages. As the horse races, an exciting explosion of colorful contours suggesting flowers and butterflies becomes ever more abstract until it becomes a fusion of forms. From these the horse and rider emerge. The final sequences return readers to her room, now transformed. This will be a fresh narrative experience for those who rely on text or realism to guide meaning. It is well worth turning back to grapple with potential intent. Valerio excels at conveying the pure joy of color and form and, not incidentally, the ability of art and books to lift us up and away. (Picture book. 3-6)

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March 15, 2018
Preschool-G Val�rio's book begins with a cityscape in blues and grays, then zeroes in on a girl gazing out her lackluster apartment window. As she leaves her building, she steps onto a sidewalk filled with mainly expressionless people, many plugged into their cell phones or earphones as they go about their day. The girl notices a discarded book lying on the pavement with a leaping blue horse on the cover. She picks it up, holds it lovingly and smiles for the first time. After returning to her room, the child opens the book and sees the magnificent blue horse with its colorful mane and tail, and her imagination is ignited. The illustrations, in pen and colored pencil, acrylic, and collage, fill the pages with bright geometric shapes and torn paper. The child beams as the book's magic takes over, and her room, which has been dreary and almost colorless, becomes brilliantly hued. Here is a tribute to art, to books, and to the power of the imagination.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 1, 2018
In this wordless picture book by Valerio (Turn on the Night, rev. 1/17), a young girl living in a rather somber city finds a book on the sidewalk, takes it back to her monochrome, soulless apartment complex, and is transported by the explosive color and energy she finds within. The title seems to refer to the early-twentieth-century Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) artistic movement, which was characterized by its expressionism and freedom, and that reference is borne out in the illustrations here of the book-within-the-book. That book's cover features a blue horse. As its pages turn, the blue horse jumps into the sky, a trail of color behind it, and subsequent spreads become increasingly abstract until they are a vibrant and electric assemblage of cut and torn geometric shapes. And from that brilliant collage the blue horse, now with the girl reader on its back, descends and returns to the city streets. The final spreads show the girl in her same apartment in its same nondescript block, but now thrumming with its own vivid geometric display, exuding happiness. While knowledge of the historical artistic movement may add meaning, it is in no way necessary; indeed, this book simply and persuasively speaks to the power of art to brighten and illuminate our lives, no matter how or where we find it. thom barthelmess

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2018
In this wordless picture book by Valerio (Turn on the Night, rev. 1/17), a young girl living in a rather somber city finds a book on the sidewalk, takes it back to her monochrome, soulless apartment complex, and is transported by the explosive color and energy she finds within. The title seems to refer to the early-twentieth-century Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) artistic movement, which was characterized by its expressionism and freedom, and that reference is borne out in the illustrations here of the book-within-the-book. That book's cover features a blue horse. As its pages turn, the blue horse jumps into the sky, a trail of color behind it, and subsequent spreads become increasingly abstract until they are a vibrant and electric assemblage of cut and torn geometric shapes. And from that brilliant collage the blue horse, now with the girl reader on its back, descends and returns to the city streets. The final spreads show the girl in her same apartment in its same nondescript block, but now thrumming with its own vivid geometric display, exuding happiness. While knowledge of the historical artistic movement may add meaning, it is in no way necessary; indeed, this book simply and persuasively speaks to the power of art to brighten and illuminate our lives, no matter how or where we find it. thom barthelmess

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2018
In this wordless story, a young girl finds a book on the sidewalk, takes it back to her monochrome, nondescript apartment complex, and is transported by the explosive color and energy she finds inside. When the girl finishes the book, her apartment now thrums with its own vivid geometric display, exuding happiness. This book simply and persuasively speaks to the power of art to brighten and illuminate our lives.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)