“There is no place more beautiful than Paris,” thinks Guillaume Apollinaire as he strolls along the city streets of Joan Yolleck and Marjorie Priceman’s bubbly picture book. This is a fanciful trip back to Apollinaire’s Paris of the early 20th century, a time of explosive creativity and energy in the city. As the title suggests, Picasso makes an appearance, as do poets Max Jacob and Gertrude Stein.

Yolleck, who lives in Toronto, uses Stein’s celebrated soirées as the anchor for her story. The tale begins with a saunter down rue de Fleurus – on which Stein lived – and continues through a number of vividly coloured, whirling streetscapes captured by Priceman, a two-time Caldecott Medal winner who lives in Pennsylvania. As we follow a nameless black cat, there’s a quick visit with Apollinaire and his girlfriend, Marie Laurencin, and a pit stop at the apartment shared by Max Jacob and Pablo Picasso, before the journey ends where it began, at the home of Stein, her brother Leo, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas.

Younger children may find the choppy pace difficult to follow, and the story is very slight. But many of the individual passages are engaging and upbeat, and there’s never a dull moment, from the twirling acrobat who gives Apollinaire an idea for a poem to the sight of a circus elephant in the middle of the city. Yolleck drops a few French words and phrases throughout the book, lending it a whiff of Gallic authenticity, while Priceman’s black ink and gouache illustrations are reminiscent of Bemelman’s Madeline, with a touch of Picasso and Dufy.

It’s the vivacity of the artwork that will appeal to most young readers, as it’s unlikely that many children will appreciate or care about the more sophisticated references in the book, such as Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose.” But they’ll relish the sight and story of a barefoot Picasso feverishly painting his Two Nudes. Meanwhile, interested children will get an introduction to a few famous people and to one of the world’s most enchanting cities, and older readers will be happy enough to lose themselves in Priceman’s exuberant illustrations.