how i spent my summer vacation by mark teague

(The paintings of Robert Bechtle provide an excellent example of out-of-door scenes that have a brightness more in line with actual out-of-doors brightness) The clouds in Mark Teague's desert resemble the surrealistic desert objects found in deserts of artist, Yves Tanguy. Typically, only adult artists realize that most out-of-doors scenes, especially desert scenes, are much brigher than the colors available in sets of colored pencils, or by sets of Crayola Crayons, or by a typical set of watercolors. Regarding the illustrations, all of the colors are somewhat dark, as might be found in typical drawings by children. But I was captured by cowboys, a wild looking crowd, their manners were rough and their voices were loud.' The writing in the entire book takes the form of rhyming sentences. To visit Aunt Fern in her house on the plains. It will do you some good to relax for a while. Your imagination, they said, is getting too wild. The writing goes like this: 'When summer began, I headed out west. Then, the illustrations segue back to the classroom. The boy stops the cattle by waving a red tablecloth. At any rate, the cattle stampede, and you can see them approaching from the desert, creating massive clouds of dust, and in the background are mesas. At the picnic, there is a 20th century barbeque grill, and there are 20th century style hot dogs, and slices of watermelon. The storyline segues, in part, back to the boy's real-life situation, and it shows the cowboys having a conventional picnic in a grassy back yard.

They give the boy a kid-sized cowboy outfit to wear, and the illustrations show the boy getting lessons in lassoing and making campfires. The cowboys capture the boy, but they are benign cowboys.

The next illustration shows the boy actually walking on the desert, but still clutching his term paper, and still reading the paper. The illustration shows a desert landscape materializing on the center of the blackboard in the schoolroom. The plot concerns a boy reading his school paper, regarding his summer vacation, to the class. Nine of the illustrations are panoramas, taking up two entire pages. HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION by Mark Teague is a 31-page medium format book. For that warm & fuzzy feeling, read this book to your child.

How i spent my summer vacation by mark teague