Summer reading! A Beach Tail.

A Beach Tail by Karen Lynn Williams. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Boyds Mills Press, 2010.

“Swish-swoosh.” The sound of waves washing the shore repeats throughout an engaging picture book in which a young African American boy is the architect of his own adventure. After Gregory draws “a Sandy lion” in the sand at the beach, his dad cautions, “Don’t go in the water, and don’t leave Sandy.” And Gregory doesn’t, but as the tail he draws on Sandy gets longer and longer, it takes him farther and farther away from his dad: over an old sand castle, around a horseshoe and a ghost crab, all the way to a jetty. “But Gregory did not go in the water, and he did not leave Sandy.” It’s only when he finally looks up that Gregory realizes how far he’s gone. He turns a moment of worry—which one of those distant figures sitting on towels is his dad?–into masterful problem solving when he follows Sandy’s tail over and around all the objects, back to his dad’s welcome smile. Floyd Cooper’s sun-washed, sandy illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to this terrific picture book narrative. Highly Commended, 2011 Charlotte Zolotow Award(MS) ©2010 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Check it out here:  http://readon.education.wisc.edu

I will  be taking A Beach Tail to Hawaii to read with my grandson, Ethan.  We plan to make a lion in the sand with a long tail, hoping for a journey down the beach with adventure.

His dad, Peter will be with us, the very boy who left the safety of the family umbrella and inspired this story all those years ago.  I watched him wonder down the beach and panic when he could not find his way back.   That experience resurfaced to become A Beach Tail.  Little did I know I would be sharing it with my grandchildren one summer.