10 ovejitas

PreS-K—This fleecy, Spanish-language counting book takes a flock of sheep from one to 10 and incorporates woolly color identification as a bonus. From the yellow lamb who happily jumps into ponds to the tutu-clad black hoofer, these colorful and indefatigable ovines multiply from page to page until there are 10 high-steppers unwisely performing the can-can upon a doomed table. Rachner's brightly hued sheep's expressions range from manic to ecstatic atop shaggy, gumdrop shaped bodies. They blithely gambol from one goofy adventure to the next across an idyllic pastoral landscape. Unfortunately, the rhyme and meter are uneven, and some verses are formatted as paragraphs because of sentence length. On the first page, the word amarillo is stranded three words from the end of the line. As a result, its partner charquillo ends up an orphan. This formatting faux pas is repeated for verses five and eight. Roja's rhyme partner in the eighth is afloja, yet the line terminates with que. Because of the inherent challenge of rhyming in another language, it's difficult to ascertain how this awkward Spanish-language effort differs from Gehm's original German edition.