Wild Blue: Taming a Big-Kid Bike

Slater does an excellent job inhabiting that space between imagination and real life that allows two things to be true: Wild Blue can be simultaneously a horse and a bicycle. Hughes’s soft acrylic-ink illustrations capture that space as well: we sometimes see Kayla in a cowboy hat in the company of a large horse, and at other times in a bicycle helmet with her bike. Readers will appreciate Kayla’s commitment to her imaginative life, along with Slater’s twist on the familiar learning-to-ride-a-bike story.
—The Horn Book

A quiet story, this may help young readers who are similarly transitioning their two-wheeled steeds or prepare them for the experience of doing so. . . A new tale with a classic feel that will buoy many young riders.
—Kirkus Reviews

Through the extended metaphor of taming a wild stallion, an imaginative child describes learning to ride a new bike in this warmly encouraging story. . . aptly captures the thrilling triumph of learning to ride.
—Publishers Weekly

Kayla’s “pink pony” (a bike with training wheels) is too small for her now, and it’s time to put it “out to pasture” and find a more suitable steed. Kayla “wrangles” a ride she dubs Wild Blue at the bike shop, but the bike is a huge adjustment from her old one. . . Viewers taking on a daunting new skill may relate to and benefit from Kayla’s imaginative methods.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

This picture book, in which a girl trades in her training wheels for a daunting two-wheeler, is a subtle but effective demonstration of how exposure therapy can conquer fear. . . . The acrylic-ink illustrations and sunset hues brilliantly enhance the Old West metaphor, as the landscape shifts incrementally from urban to rural. . . a great example of step-by-step learning.
—Booklist

In this understanding picture book by Dashka Slater, we meet a young girl who imagines that her low-slung kiddie bike is a pink pony. . . . There’s a beguiling fluidity in the illustrations (see below) that allows us to see the child’s surroundings both as they are and as her fancy perceives them. . . . Readers ages 3-6 who are nervous about taming their own big-kid bikes will find a heroine to cheer in this heartening and humorous tale.
—The Wall Street Journal