#Booky100Keepers Day 33: "The Hundred Decker Bus" by Mike Smith (Macmillan Children's Books)

This one originally came as a recommendation from awesome Catherine over at the fabulous Story Snug blog and we were utterly delighted with it - and it still gets read today.

It feels like the sort of book I loved as a kid too, purely because it's a work of whimsy that doesn't feel the need to cram a 'message' down your throat like so many other picture books you won't find in our #Booky100Keepers list.

The story opens with a bus driver, a chap who is well and truly stuck in a rut. He gets up at the same time every morning, goes to work at the same time every morning, and sets off on time in his big red bus.

Only...one morning something changes. Thanks to some traffic the driver sees another road, a road he's never gone down before - and soon he and his passengers are embarking on a mystery tour to 'who knows where' aboard the bus (kids don't actually worry about the fact that some of the folk on the bus need to get to work or school, they just go along with the story without questioning the mechanics of it, and I ADORE that about this book).

As the driver picks up more and more passengers, they all begin to realise that the bus is getting a bit crowded. But never mind, they're an inventive lot and help to build another deck on the bus, and another, and another - until the bus eventually reaches the sea.

Journey over? Not a bit of it! The bus is retrofitted with the ability to float, and eventually to fly in the book's big fold-out surprise reveal. For all we know that bus is still rolling along too!

Over the course of the ten years of writing this blog we've always craved stories like this. Stories that spur kids' imaginations and let them fly. Books that don't make a pretence that they're imparting some nugget of wisdom that your common sense wouldn't have already told you (and if there's one huge criticism I'd make of the current UK picture book market, it's that it's utterly and completely bloated with horrid little books that deem to tell you - or your kids -  how to live a better life or to be a better person). This book does none of those things. This book merely sets out to entertain you and boy, it sure does a good job of that.

Original review link

https://readitdaddy.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-hundred-decker-bus-by-mike-smith.html