Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over

Kimberlee Gard is an award-winning and bestselling children’s author of multiple picture books. She lives on a small farm in Colorado with her husband, sons, and a gaggle of barnyard friends. You can visit her at www.kimberleegard.com. Sandie Sonke is an illustrator living in Rancho Cucamonga, California. She graduated with a BA in studio art from Cal State University–Fullerton in 2010. Wearer of many hats, Sonke is a freelance illustrator, wife, and mom to two inspirational souls. When she is not drawing, you can find her playing Legos with her kids or sipping coffee with her husband.

"Readers will immediately want to jump into these familiar playground scenes, depicted in richly colored, simple images with a folkart flair. Just as quickly, youngsters will feel for the the five lowercase vowels who aren’t sure how they fit in with all the little consonants having fun playing tag, four-square, and hide-n-seek together. This use of lowercase letters, an element educators will welcome, adds to the relatability for youngsters. Concern builds when the little consonants form two lines to start Red Rover, Red Rover and realize they can’t spell any words. Yet the vowels still aren’t sure they can help. Little o worries about rolling around too much. Little i fears losing its dot by running too fast. And as usual, Little e just stays silent. The mood is low when Little y makes a speech to reassure the vowels that being different is special. Some may find Little y’s input hits a bit too hard on differences versus, perhaps, collaboration or confidence. Yet the tone stays light and breezy as those other themes play out on the subsequent pages. Little h and Little i join up and say ‘hi.’ The Red Rover line made by Little r, n, c, and m breaks into two new lineups that include vowels to spell ‘run’ and ‘come.’ Readers are delicately guided over several spreads to unscramble and then decode (or at least be inspired to recognize) all the little letters now aligned to spell out a happy message. As the letters cheer, “Hooray, hooray, the vowels saved the day!” the everyone combines for even more friendly wordplay."