Mr. Gumpy's Outing - Tapa dura

"Mr. Gumpy's little scow becomes a miniature ark when he takes two children and one each of the various domestic animals for a ride. . . . The water appears so warmly inviting, and the tea they all share so satisfying, that the promise of the first glowing page is fulfilled. Burningham's sketchy yellow lines make the sun shine on his pages, and his animals--sometimes jaunty, more often appealingly hesitant--are his alone, unostentatiously distinctive. Mr. Gumpy has bumbling charm, and his outing is an unqualified pleasure." --Kirkus Reviews

"A real charmer of a picture book for the very young." --Booklist

"Mr. Grumpy's Outing is out of sight." --School Library Journal

Mr. Gumpy's Outing is a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner and an American Library Association Notable Children's Book. In England, illustrator John Burningham, with Mr. Gumpy's Outing, became the first artist ever to win England's Kate Greenaway Medal twice.

Mr. Gumpy lives by a river. One sunny day he decides to take a ride in his small boat.

It is such a perfect idea, for such a perfect summer day, that he soon has company: first the children, then the rabbit, the cat, the dog, the pig, the sheep, the chickens, and still others until-- Mr. Gumpy's outing comes to an inevitable but not unhappy, conclusion.

"Come for a ride another day," says Mr. Gumpy at the book's end. And young readers will return again and again to this sprightly story with its clever, captivating illustrations that reflect the sunlit quality of a lazy summer afternoon.

An ALA Notable Children's Book
A New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children's Book
A Child Study Association Children's Book of the Year
A Library of Congress Children's Book of the Year