Parents and children will welcome back everyone's favorite student and teacher, Rocket and the little yellow bird, in their beginning-reader debut. Having learned that he fancies reading (in How Rocket Learned to Read) and writing, Rocket now stars in a Step into Reading book that shares his love.
"Rocket and the little yellow bird love words," the book begins. "They love their word tree, too." Fans of Rocket Writes a Story will recognize the word tree in the opening scene, as the little yellow bird adds "tree" and "dog" to its branches. "Rocket finds a leaf. 'Drop it, Rocket,' says the bird," standing on Rocket's nose on the left-hand side of the next spread. "Rocket drops the leaf. He is a good dog," accompanies the picture on the right-hand side of the same spread. Hills shows the leaf on the ground as Rocket faces forward with the yellow bird on his head. The same series of events occur when Rocket finds a hat and a star. Leaf, hat, star and bird all appear on the word tree now. However, Rocket rather likes a red boot. He's not so eager to part with it. This allows Hills to repeat "Drop it, Rocket" several times and to use his illustrations to escalate the humor. Owl comes to the rescue.
The repetition of key words and of sentence structure, and Tad Hills's wonderful illustrations all help to guide children through the action, as they learn to recognize letters and word combinations. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness