THE TRUTH ABOUT WIND

While playing in his yard, Jesse accidentally acquires the perfect toy. He spots a black horse tumbling out of a wagon pulled by passers-by. Impulsively, the boy reaches through the fence and grabs it. The shiny, black horse on wheels captures Jesse’s imagination right away. Instantly dubbed “Wind” by the delighted boy, the toy inspires a whole new world of make-believe adventure. Wind by name and wind by nature, the horse races everywhere, “across the tabletop prairie and up and over the rolling cauliflower hills while Jesse ate supper.” The fantasy permits him to swim and dive in the bathtub, to gallop up the slide, and to splash “through puddles at glorious speed.” Jesse lies to his mother, telling her that Grandma gave him the horse. However his conscience starts to trouble him when he sees signs at the library and on the footbridge about a lost horse. He realizes he must do the right thing and return the toy to its rightful owner. Hutchins and Herbert’s text is vivid, specific, and evocative; Petričić’s pencil-and-watercolor illustrations have a fun, cartoonish quality that perfectly suits the story, investing the nominally inanimate toy with a huge personality. Jesse is white; there is diversity in the crowd scenes.

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