Ty’s Travels: Zip, Zoom!

K-Gr 2–In the “Ty’s Travels” series, a young Black boy brings his imagination to playtime along with a box and his scooter. In Zip, Zoom! Ty learns to ride his scooter in the park as his mother encourages him that he can do it. Along the way he imagines people in a stadium waving flags and rooting for him. He gets a bit discouraged when he falls off his scooter but a young girl named Ari, also Black, tells him not to give up and she shows him how it’s done, then rides along with him. In All Aboard! Ty is excited to play, asking his parents and brother to join in, but they are all busy. In the basement, he finds a box and visualizes it as a train, and takes a trip. With simple sentence structures that reinforce skills for emerging readers, Lyons gets to the heart of what it means to be a young child with imagination. The illustrations provide visual clues to Ty’s day, with the dynamic scenes in the park providing a bustling, multicultural landscape.