Seaside Stroll

♦ The wonders of a winter walk.
This charming outing delights in many ways. First, the entire story is told with s-words, adjectives, verbs, and nouns: scruffy, slosh, and, best of all, standstill, as the two beachgoers, an adult and a child, encounter something special. Read more closely, it’s a poem with a pleasing rhythm and repetitions and a balanced, grammatical structure (explained further in an afterword). The text sits directly on full-bleed illustrations with just one or two lines to a spread, sometimes only a word. Pacing is also indicated with ellipses and page turns. “Slow…

♦There’s snow on the ground and a chill in the air, so it’s obviously a perfect day for—the beach? Any season can be spent seaside with an adventurous spirit and the right clothing, so a white mother and her daughter bundle up and wander down to the windswept water’s edge. The child takes a similarly bundled doll on the adventure, and the beach is empty of humans but full of other fun: shells and seaweed, terns and tidal pools. A sudden slip and splash see the child and doll soaked in seawater, but a cozy tub and story time await at the end of the marvelous, chilly day. Trevino tells the…

An ode to the joys of a walk on a winter beach, told entirely in words beginning with the letter s. Pictures in a mix of digital and traditional mediums show a parent and child, doll in tow, bundling up before heading out for their walk and then reveling in the wintry seaside experience, with its sand, snow, seaweed, and surf. The child examines shells, runs after a flock of seagulls, and explores a tide pool with unlooked-for consequences, as the doll falls in ("Slip. . . splash. . . soaked!") and must be rescued ("Stretch. . . snatch. . . squeeze. . . saved!"). The text is a nice mix of…