Author: Laura Pedersen
Illustrator: Penny Weber
Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
ISBN: 978-0-88448-388-5

“Disappointed when her parents say she can’t go on a snowboarding trip with a friend, Ava escapes to her room. There she finds that the power of imagination and her own creativity take her a greater distance than any snowboard could,” Laura Pedersen writes on the back jacket of her children’s book, Ava’s Adventure.

This unnumbered over-sized thirty-two page paperback targets children from preschool to early elementary school ages. With no scary scenes, it promotes learning to accept life’s challenges and disappointments and turn them into positive experiences. Due to some multi-syllable words, it would be best read aloud to beginner readers.

Illustrator Weber’s designs are colorful with their expressive, detailed emotions on the characters’ faces, making it easy to follow the storyline. Wording is usually printed in a simplistic font within small black boxes or outlined inserts overlaying the artwork.

In this short story, young Ava is at home when she gets a phone call from her friend, Lucas, asking if she can go snowboarding with his family for the weekend. When she asks her parents, they inform her that it costs too much. They reiterate they already pay for her sister’s violin lessons and her art classes.

Full of anger, Ava stomps upstairs to her bedroom, complaining that Lucas will find someone else to snowboard with and forget their friendship. With self-pity, she kicks her toys around and lies on her bed, not wanting to do anything.

Later that Friday she has a plan. She begins to work on a project that encompasses much of her time on Saturday morning through the evening and into Sunday, focusing on making herself happy as she designs and creates instead of being negative.

Unexpectedly she has a visitor; Lucas is home early from his trip because his brother got ill. Almost finished, she shows him an entire town she built, complete with a cabin, restaurants, trees, and paper snowflakes.

While the two friends complete the artwork, Lucas says he wants to be an Olympic snowboarder or professional soccer player while Ava dreams of designing things. They plan the next weekend’s creation, contented they are happy with whom they are.

Second book by the author, this story encourages children to look for the good in things when they do not always get what they want and find creative outlets when frustrated or unhappy.

Thanks to Bookpleasures for furnishing this complimentary book in exchange for a review based on the reader’s honest opinions.

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