Mud Is Cake - Hardcover

If you can make yourself believe that mud is cake, then anything goes! Pam Munoz Ryan (Esperanza Rising) and illustrator David McPhail pay tribute the power of imagination in this lovely rhyming picture book populated with Maurice Sendak-style kids and the wild things they conjure from everyday objects. "Mud is cake / if you pretend / and don't really take a bite. / And juice is tea / with a fairy queen / if you act it out just right." A rainy, storybook kind of morning produces the mud (and the rainbow) that set the stage for an exciting afternoon of pretending. In the mind's eye, children's toys transform themselves into life-sized animals, "And a tree is spaceship / if you trust / that it can fly away." McPhail's color-drenched watercolors lend themselves well to flights of fancy in this dreamy bedtime read-aloud. (Ages 3 to 5) --Karin Snelson

David McPhail has written and illustrated more than eighty books for children. He lives in New Hampshire.