Tricia Tusa’s ‘Follow Me’ is childhood imagination at its best

“FOLLOW ME,” by Tricia Tusa, Harcourt Children’s Books, April 18, 2011, $16.99 (ages 4-8)

Remember what it was like to swing as a child? Pumping your legs to push you higher and higher, the sky rushing to great you as you kissed the clouds.

“Follow Me,” a new picture book written and illustrated by Tricia Tusa, brings those childhood memories flooding back.

A young girl beckons you to follow her as she “wanders through pink” and gets “lost in blue.” She rises and falls in purple and gray and finds her way in “small, green, happy music.” Brown, yellow orange and red are “all tumbled together” as she gets caught in the “curl of a breeze.”

Simple yet lyrical text accompanies swirling illustrations. Each page plays into the next, encouraging the reader to get swept up in the magic and imagination. Tricia Tusa perfectly captures a child at play, lost in her own thoughts and creations.