Jonathan Bean matches each pair of words with equally expressive illustrations His illustrations follow the mood of the story from sad blues and grays in the beginning which transition into sunny yellows and reds during the road trip and finally end in dreamy blues and warm yellows as the young boy meets a new friend This is perfect for introducing young children to life s changes and transitions and for helping them to cope with the emotions good and bad that can surround a move Includes a website with tips for a good move with kids 0547928521 You feel the constant motion of the story with every illustration in this great little picture book about moving So much emotion and uncertainty was captured at the beginning of the story The nice bits of hope and interest in the new surroundings at the end Few words are given.

The boy meets another kid who just happens to live next door Together they collect lightning bugs and star gaze until that bad bye at the beginning of the book morphs into a far comfortable good bye when the new friends bid each other goodnight This isn t Underwood s first time at the rodeo The art of the restrained use of language is sort of her bread and butter Anyone who has seen her work her magic in The Quiet Book is aware that she says loads with very little I sincerely hope someone out there has been bugging her to write an easy book for kids The talent of synthesizing a story down to its most essential parts is a rare one In this book there is a total of 57 words or so These usually appear in two word pairs and by some extraordinary bit of planning they also rhyme We begin with all bads It goes Bad day.

Poetic and sparse the words help a little boy go from being mad because his family is moving and he has to say goodbye to friends and favorite things I love Jonathan Bean s pictures filling the pages in overlays as they travel and as they arrive There are moments of happiness as the boy discovers people and things that help him feel at home New town New Park New street new bank The book shows well that there are two kinds of bye a good and a bad one I imagine conversations of how word meanings change sometimes can happen when this book is read 0547928521 No matter the meaning or how it is said goodbye is edged initially with sadness either you or someone else is leaving When the choice to go is not yours it s even harder in some cases an act of bravery Bad Bye Good Bye Houghton Mifflin Harcourt written by Deborah Underwood with illustrations by Jonathan Bean is about going from the familiar into the unknown frightening or exciting or a little bit of both. My full review 0547928521 For the words the only thing about this book is the word play on badbye goodbye Underwood also did well at writing so the rhythm stayed clear But I thought this was the sort of overdone topic and style that editors weren t supposed to be interested in even looking at any How about a book where a kid moves away from home but learns to feel better and it will rhyme I guess once you ve got a foot in the door and you have an editor you can pitch ideas the regular public couldn t even get an agent to look at Bean s illustrations were interesting to look at The way he used blurred overlays and backgrounds around the main picture gave a feeling of movement but not using the simple drawing technique of dynamic lines This is reminiscent of Donald Crews who made movement with similar techniques in books like Shortcut I felt not only movement but also a cinematic feeling of many things happening or moving around the main figures in time with recently past images gradually fading and others coming into focus 0547928521 In only 80 words Deborah Underwood is able to capture the raw emotion and reality of change in this case of leaving an old home and familiar friends and moving to a new town with new surprises From the sadness of bad boxes and bad byes to the hot seat and long naps of the journey to the new house and good friend but few are needed to accomplish what the author set out to do Excellent all the way around 0547928521 Bad truck bad guy bad wave bad bye A boy and his family are packing up their old home and the morning feels scary and sad But when he arrives at his new home an evening of good byes awaits bye to new friends bye to glowing fireflies bye to climbing trees The New York Times bestselling author Deborah Underwood s spare text and the Boston Globe Horn Book Award winner Jonathan Bean s lush layered illustrations perfectly capture the complex emotions of moving day The child centric transition from dreary morning to cheerful evening comforts young readers facing big changes of their own Bad Bye Good ByeOMG I love this book This is the PERFECT book to read when a family is moving or someone you care about is moving away It really captures the good bad feelings associated with making such a major and stressful life change This will start the conversation 0547928521 Very sweet story about a family s big move from old to new things slowly turn from bad to good 0547928521 As a mother who recently spent the better part of twenty hours in a car with a three year old and a three month old baby I feel a special kinship with parents who have also engaged in the ultimate endurance sport travel with children If you feel no particular sympathy for those engaged in this activity that is because you have not experienced it firsthand yourself But even when my daughter was projectile vomiting regularly and even when the breast pump tipped to one side spilling milk all over my pants and EVEN WHEN I found myself wedged in the backseat between two car seats trying to change my son s diaper on my lap while parked I could still feel grateful because at least it was just a vacation It wasn t like we were moving to a new town or anything Because if I d had to deal with the abject misery of my three year old on top of the vomit milk diapers I don t know how my sanity would have remained intact And yet other parents do it all the time Every day someone somewhere packs up all their worldly possessions their pets and their miserable offspring and heads for a whole new life It s daunting You can t help but admire their guts And boy you d sure like to hand them a book that they could use to show their kids that as scary as a move like that can be ultimately it s going to be okay Enter a book so sparse and spare you d never believe it capable of the depth of feeling within its pages Deborah Underwood lends her prodigious talents to Bad Bye Good Bye while artist Jonathan Bean fills in the gaps The effect is a book where every syllable is imbued with meaning yet is as much a beautiful object as it is a useful too Bad day Bad box says the book On the page a boy wrestles with a moving man for possession of a cardboard box doomed to be loaded into the nearby moving van The boy we see is in no way happy about this move He clearly likes his home and his best friend who has come with her mother to bid him goodbye On the road he and his little sister pitch seven different kinds of catfits before sinking into a kind of resigned malaise Time heals all wounds though and with the help of a motel swimming pool diners and multiple naps they arrive in their new town in the early evening As the family and movers pile boxes and other things into the new house Bad box Bad mop Bad blocks Bad truck Bad guy Bad wave Bad bye The book then slips into neutral terms as the initial misery wears off Then as we near the end the goods come out Good tree Good sky Good friend Good bye Such a nice transition You could argue that it s pretty swift considering the depths of misery on display in the early pages and that s not too far off but kids are also pretty resilient Besides motel swimming pools do indeed go a long way towards modifying behavior Jonathan Bean s one to watch Always has been From the moment he was doing Wendy Orr s Mokie Bik books to the nativity animalia title One Starry Night to all those other books in his roster he proved himself a noteworthy artist Watching his work come out you have the distinct sense that this is the calm before the storm The last minute before he wins some big award and starts fielding offers from the biggest names in the biz In this book I wouldn t necessarily have said the art was by Bean had I not seen his name spelled out on the cover It s a slightly different style for him Not just pencil and watercolors any A style in fact that allows him to try and catch a bit of Americana in the story s pages When Underwood writes something like Big hair White deer it s Bean s prerogative to determine what that means exactly His solution to that as well as other sections is layering Time and landscapes are layered on top of one another America from diners and speed limit signs to windmills and weathervanes display scenes familiar to traveling families A great artist gives weight and meaning to the familiar Jonathan Bean is a great artist Now the cover of this book is also well worth noting I don t say that about a lot of picture books either Generally speaking a picture book s cover advertises the book to the best of its ability but only occasionally warrants close examination Jonathan Bean however isn t afraid to convey pertinent information through his cover In fact if you look at it closely you ll see that he s managed to encapsulate the entire story from one flap to another Begin at the end of the book Open it up If you look at the inside back flap the very first thing you ll see underneath the information about the author and the illustrator is the image of the boy in the story straining against his seatbelt his face a grimace of pure unadulterated rage Now follow the jacket to the back cover of the book and you see the boy crying in one shot and then looking miserably back in another The weather is alternating between a starry night sky and a windy rainy day Move onto the front cover and the rain is still there but soon it turns to clear skies and the boy s attitude morphs into something distinctly pleasant In fact by the time you open the book to the front flap he s lifting his hands in a happy cheer The attitude adjustment could not be stark and it was done entirely in the span of a single book jacket Not the kind of thing everyone would notice and remarkable for that fact alone People are always talking about the great American novel as if that s an attainable ideal We don t ever hear anyone talk about the great American picture book I don t know that Bad Bye Good Bye would necessarily fit the bill anyway This is the picture book equivalent of On the Road than To Kill a Mockingbird after all It s a road trip book albeit a safe and familiar one For children facing the frightening prospect of the unknown and let s face it adults hardly do much better it s good to have a book that can offer a bit of comfort A reassurance that no matter how things change good can follow bad just as day follows night They are not alone in this uprooting Somewhere out there in another car with another family there might be a kid just as miserable as they are and for the exact same reason And like all humans this knowledge ends up being comforting and necessary Therefore give all your love to Bad Bye Good Bye It has necessary comfort to spare. For ages 3 6 0547928521 Simple rhyming text coupled with busy art tells the story of a family on their moving day The boy is upset about leaving behind a friend until he makes a new friend at his new house Illustrations contain some unusual overlapping and ghosted images that create forward movement and enhance the theme of change Love Dinah s Dina Without stating it outright this picture book clearly demonstrates that the unknown is scary but having the courage to face it brings unexpected rewards 0547928521 I think my ovaries may have shrivelled a little while reading this That beginning is so stressful While it s a faithful representation of child angst and tantrums I could practically hear the shrieking. So aside from a couple of parents who apparently did absolutely nothing to prepare their child for a move he blames the movers calling them bad this story just shows rather predictably that change is good The message might be new to some kids but I ve seen this done many times already and in ways that didn t make me want to run out and stock up on birth control I also really dislike the ending which might be confusing to some kids while adults will get the whole bad bye good bye thing a child might be fairly concerned at the final good bye thinking that the poor family is going to have to move again: For much a relaxing book about moving check out Nicola O Byrne s adorable Where Is Home Daddy Bear 0547928521