Ben Rides On by Matt Davies (review)

Ben loves riding to school on his shiny new bicycle, but unfortunately, Adrian Underbite, the third-grade bully, takes a liking to Ben's bike and rides away on it. Walking home after school, Ben discovers Adrian has crashed the bike and is now dangling from a tree branch on a cliff. Ben initially leaves Adrian hanging but then decides to lend him a hand—only to have Adrian dash away with the beat-up bike, much to Ben's frustration. In the morning, however, the bike has been returned, perfectly repaired. This is a fairly standard and messagey story, and its telling is somewhat sketchy and episodic. The language is generally sprightly, however, with flowery vocabulary that is sometimes droll ("How extraordinarily terrible," Ben thinks with a huge grin when spying Adrian over the edge of the cliff ). Ben, with his flyaway brown hair and green-and-white striped hoodie, has a constant, though rarely mentioned, companion in a particularly haggard-looking crow, while Adrian is a stock schoolyard bully with a barrel chest, jutting forehead, and distinctive underbite. Davies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist, and his style carries over to the book: scratchy and unruly pen drawings with scribbled details and shading that often burst from their outlines are filled in with pale watercolors. Despite the book's flaws, kids may enjoy Ben's derring-do and find satisfaction in the bully-rehabilitation narrative.