Everybody Bonjours!

Starred review from March 24, 2008
Kids may well demand to be taken to the nearest passport office after finishing this light-as-a-soufflé salute to the City of Lights. On vacation with her parents (clearly well-heeled) and little brother, a girl embraces her role as tourist, savoring all the places where one can say “Bonjour”: On a barge trip down the Seine, at the top of the Tour Eiffel and Notre Dame, in a chic boutique—or, as Kimmelman (Dance, Sing, Remember
) puts it in her economical text: “Doing chores./ Eating petits fours./ Everybody bonjours!” McMenemy's (Waggle
) mixed-media images, mostly full-page scenes of classic locations, are a stylish yet timeless mélange of fauvist whimsy and affectionate reportage; the days are sunny, the flowers are in brilliant bloom, and every Parisian is smiling. A bubbly, illustrated afterward offers a soupçon of additional information on each of the sites that appear in the pages. Fantastique!
Ages 5-8.

April 1, 2008
PreS-Gr 1-A mom, dad, girl, and baby travel to Paris, where everyone says "bonjour". As they explore the sights, they are cheerfully greeted again and again: "From shores./In stores./On guided tours./Everybody "bonjours"!" Short bursts of rhyming text lead up to the title refrain. The naive, mixed-media illustrations show the family visiting the Eiffel Tower, a café, the zoo, and an open-air market. The scenery is filled with abstract splashes of bright watercolors set against white backdrops, and the girl, wearing a red dress with a white heart on it, stands out on each page. Her smile and eager posture indicate her enjoyment. The endpapers feature labeled drawings of the settings shown throughout the book. At the beginning, Monsieur LeMousie shares the meaning and phonetic pronunciation of "bonjour" and "merci". The mouse then appears in every picture, including the one of the airplane that takes the family back to waiting grandparents in a country where everybody "hellos." This book provides a clever introduction to a foreign culture as seen through a child's eyes."Julie R. Ranelli, Queen Anne's County Free Library, Stevensville, MD"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2008
This delightful tour of Paris begins, When in Paris, everybody bonjours. The refrain is repeated as a little girl and her family hear that welcome, From shores. In stores.On guided tours. The cheery ink-and-watercolor artwork is stylishly rendered. McMenemysometimes places her characters in spaces of white that highlight them against quintessentially French backgrounds. (An architectural key on the endpapers identifies sites from the Eiffel Tower to the Paris Zoo.) Throughout, the brief rhymes are tightly rendered but cleverly worded, and they work perfectly in tandem with the art, giving youngsters a solid idea of what treats await them in Paris, should they be lucky enough to visit. A clever ending shows what happens when the little girl and her teddy bear fly backto the States. Those who have been paying close attention will be delighted by the presence on the plane of thesmall mouse, who has followed the family in and around Paris, and has now managed to find its way to the U.S. Tr's bien!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2008
A girl traveling in Paris notices that "everybody bonjours." More than a straightforward travel guide for tots, this book features inventive rhymes coupled with alluring and carefree Parisian city scenes; e.g., for "Every place, it's all bonjouring. / Players scoring. / Batter-pouring," we're brought first to a soccer game, then a creperie.

(Copyright 2008 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)