I Wish I Could Fly

Entry Number: 49

Title: I Wish I Could Fly
Author: Ron Maris
Illustrator: Ron Maris
Publisher: Green Willow Books, Scholastic
Year: 1986, 1990
ISBN: 978-0590652469
Genre: Fiction
Topics: animals, turtles, self-awareness, feelings, sounds
Age Group: 0-4
Awards:n/a
Dewey Category: n/a
Format: Picturebook

That familiar yearning to be someone else is realized in this lushly written tale. Crash! Bang! Wallop! Crunch! goes the turtle who attempts to fly like the bird nearby. Similar catastrophes occur when turtle tries to hop like a frog, climb like a squirrel and run like rabbit—and each failure is accompanied by a quartet of bursting onomatopoeias. The rustic green and brown watercolors combined with soft charcoal details compliment the naturalistic ambiance of this animal-inhabited world. It takes a few plops, splutters, and splashes before this turtle realizes what he is good at—and a change of the weather makes him happy to be in his own shell!