Hit the Road, Jack (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Hit the Road, Jack
Joining the ranks of such age- and genre-defying picture books as Chris Raschka's John Coltrane's Giant Steps (BCCB 9/02) and Jonah Winter's Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude (BCCB 1/09) is this homage to Jack Kerouac, who's interpreted here as a restless jackrabbit who treks across the U.S.A. to see the sights, meet the people, and just generally take life as it comes. MacDonald's long-eared traveler, with jeans rolled at the ankle, rucksack, sturdy shoes, and squint-eyed grin, makes his coast to coast journey via bus and freight car, hitched rides and on foot, reveling in the golden sun-washed vision of a mid twentieth-century America rife with small-town carnivals and big-city bustle. The rhymed text sports an urgent momentum as restless as its subject: "The wind against the windshield./ The smell of rubber burning,/ An old tune on the radio,/ The click of wheels a-turning./ Into the Great Plains, growing dark,/ A farm, a twinkling light,/ While the moon plays whoopsie-doopsie/ With the blackness of the night." Primary-grade teachers who want to take the low road could certainly map Jack's route for an obvious geography tie-in, but why not throw curricular caution to the wind, read the author's note about the real Jack Kerouac first, and then let the rhythm of the road get under the kids' skin and inspire their own cross-country dreams? [End Page 76]
