Books like Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car
By John Burningham
For the kid who wants everyone invited — every friend, every animal, every seat filled — this is the drive where nobody gets left behind. Gentle, sunny, cumulative, with a splash of mud and a happy ending.
Give a hungry little mouse a cookie and he'll ask for milk, then a mirror, then scissors — one small request tumbling into the next until the whole day spins out of control.
A hermit crab finds a brand-new shell and refuses to share it with a blobby purple anemone and a tickly bristleworm — until rock-pool life turns out tougher than he expected.
A gentle riverside man sets out for a boat ride and picks up passenger after passenger — children, a rabbit, a cat, a dog, a pig, a sheep, chickens — until the crowded boat meets its inevitable end.
A little girl and her mother pick blueberries on a Maine hillside, but when Sal wanders off she ends up trailing a mother bear while a hungry little bear follows her own mother instead.
A lonely woman welcomes a traveling salesman's pets into her home one by one, but draws the line firmly at one thing: no elephants, thank you very much.
A witch and her cat fly happily on a broomstick until the wind blows away her hat, bow, and wand — and the animals who return them all want a ride, leaving no room to spare when a hungry dragon attacks.
Three friends creep through the woods to catch a beautiful bird with their nets, shushing a fourth companion who has a much gentler idea in mind.
A girl named Cordelia hosts a proper tea party with her brother, but their guest of honor is a T-Rex whose manners turn out to be more Cretaceous than gracious.
A boy drifts off to sleep and dreams he's driving a night train through the countryside, stopping again and again to let endangered animals climb aboard.
While Farmer Gray is away, a goose, a hen, a chick, and a duck grab paintbrushes and turn their plain black-and-white barnyard into a world of color.
A small boy and a big friendly bear head off on a berry-picking adventure, paddling canoes and crossing bridges through Berryland in search of blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries for jam.
A boy sets off to buy simple things like a carrot, a hat, and a cake, but every shop hands him the wrong item entirely — a growing parade of mixed-up animals instead.
