Follow a family on their day trip to the sea. Join them as they drive past the garage, over the bridge and around the corner. Children will love to point out the roadworks, the bulldozer and the brightly-coloured cars. This is a simple story, for even the youngest child.
For the parents of car-obsessed toddlers - and for those toddlers themselves - any attractive new way of capturing those much-loved images and investing them with some imagination is a godsend. On the Road is no more than the outline of a simple family journey: there are no artificially created dramatic moments, but the momentum of travelling through tunnels and round corners, conveyed from changing angles to show where the car is and what is going on around it, is enough to propel the story. The bold collage images of diggers, fire engines and cyclists whizzing by and the little mini into which the family has piled arehugely attractive, and the final double-page spread of arrival is a beautiful and satisfying conclusion. - Guardian
Susan Steggall's On the Road, with its minimal narrative about a family car journey to the seaside, could travel equally well between language and art teaching. On the text level, as well as being ideal for beginner readers, it's a lesson in the use of 10 dimensional prepositions, which are illustrated in pictures: 'across', 'around', 'past', and so on - and add all the typical things that children can spot from car windows. Steggall has used collage to create compositions full of interest, with bold shapes in flat strong colours. All very handsome. - Times Educational Supplement
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