"When Mrs Golightly retired, she bought a bicycle."  So starts Colin Thompson’s latest picture book, and so starts Mrs Golightly’s adventures as she sets off round the world.

Leaving her husband (who thinks she’ll be home for dinner), she heads South because everyone knows that South is always downhill.  The fun and the freedom are wonderful and soon other people want to join her.  At first they just sit on the handlebars and then on the crossbar but soon its gets crowded.  Bits need to be added to the bike to fit them all and so, as the journey goes on through the West and the North and the East, the bike grows and grows!

It is a wonderful idea and Thompson keeps it flitting along from place to place with a light and quirky humour.  It is beautifully structured for reading aloud – there are also plenty of opportunities to invent other endings or new episodes.  It would be an excellent read-together choice for parents and little readers just learning to be independent.

Unfortunately Penelope Gamble’s illustrations let it down a little.  Her scenery is great but her people are a bit clumsy, especially faces.  She seems uncertain whether to go for realism or cartoons.

In the end, the journey comes round to Mrs Golightly’s home again and to her patiently waiting husband. But, like life (even for retirees!), the bike and the journey keep going, round and round and round!

Other books by this author:
Pepper Dreams (Hodder, 2003)
The Violin Man (Hodder, 2003)

Review by David Beagley

© 2003 David Beagley