Dora Goes for a Ride

by phoebe-beinstein

Trains, planes,...and hot-air balloons? Dora is going for a ride "explorer" style and she wants you to come along!

Genres: Childrens

22 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This installment in the well-known series Dora the Explorer follows the typical genre of the hero-quest, in this case involving Dora's efforts to find her friend Diego at his Animal Rescue Center. Leaving the issue of the unspoken politics of Diego's endeavors aside, the story instead focuses on Dora's surprisingly complex journey, involving several different forms of transportation. These include a school bus, a car, a row boat, a fire truck, an airplane, a train, and a hot air balloon. Each vehicle is driven by (or some cases actually are) one of Dora's friends. Although one might expect as in traditional narratives of an exciting journey that each stage would include some entertaining episode, in fact each leg of her journey involves no events of note whatsoever. These friends are apparently there simply to take her to the next stage. There are not even allowed any dialogue or opportunity to make an impression on the reader. All you know is that Azul the train is blue, and that Rojo's engine is loud – given that Rojo has just given Dora a free ride across the 'icky-sticky sand', you would think she would have something nicer to say about him. Dora begin's her journey from school, where she must first take the school bus home. During this brief episode, the illustrator has chosen to depict her friend Isa waving to Dora from outside the window, apparently engaging in watering some plants, even though the actual commentary in no way acknowledges Isa's presence, nor is Isa even mentioned anywhere else in the story by name. If one was not familiar with this series, one would just assume sort of random dinosaur was waving from the side of the road. Dora's friend Tico – a species of some sort of rodent – inexplicably is her driver for two separate legs of the journey. The first leg (and the second in the overall journey), in which he drives her and Boots in his car, and a second leg (and fifth overall), in which he pilots a plane over "Tall Mountain" (which Dora describes for the reader with the astute observation that it "is a very tall mountain"). One wonders if Tico possesses his own plane why he did not simply take them on the entire journey in his plane and save them a lot of time and trouble, as well an unnecessary risks like rowing a boat across a lake filled with crocodiles. Perhaps Tico's plane was stowed at another location, but the author did not choose to divulge such details. It also doesn't explain why Tico was able to fly them over the mountain, but not the rest of the way, requiring them to go through the tunnel with Azul the train and then on to Benny's hot air balloon. Once they arrive, the narrative abruptly ends in the manner of Woolf's To the Lighthouse, as if Diego and his efforts at animal rescue (represented in the final illustration by a tortoise, a tapir, a snake, a frog, a bird, and a llama) are a mere MacGuffin for the author, who cares not for animals and used this as a convenient excuse to put Dora and Boots on as many forms of transportation as possible. This would seem to be supported by her final statement to the reader, in which as soon as she arrives, she asks the reader "Where do you want to go next?" Poor Diego, clearly a child working a remote location in South America, needs a better friend than this ADD-addled young girl who cannot be bothered to stay still for even two pages. Perhaps we can look forward to a sequel in which we finally learn what happens at Diego's animal rescue center, as well as why young Diego is engaged in this effort rather than at school like Dora.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

my girls love dora

[Elizabeth Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

i would love to go for a hot air balloon ride. so fun. great read. love the illustrations.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to put this on here because of my daughter - she loves this book right now. It's a fun book full of different modes of transportation. Nothing earth shattering about it, but my daughter's world would be shattered right now if this book ever disappeared, so it's getting 4 stars from our house!

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

My daughter brought this home from the library for my grand daughter last week and my grand daughter brings it to us at least once a day to be read.I like that it teaches about transportation and that Dora teaches some Spanish in it as well. I only give this a three star because it is not one of my granddaughters favorites that brings us many times a day to be read

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

my daughter loves Dora and she was really into this book :)

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't let the cover fool you--there was no hot air balloon ride, so I subtracted a star and am renaming this book "Dora's Elaborate Ruse."

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book talks about different forms of transportation as well as some colors in Spanish

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lola loved it! It was fine.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

read with my sis it kept her intrest

[Aaron Wong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beinstein, P. (2004). Dora goes for a ride. New York: Simon Spotlight.

[Thomas Dimson]

aaddsards