Balls Next to an Ant A Circle in the Sky Number One Puppy

PreS-Gr 1—These books support pre- and emerging readers through clear and engaging writing. Jones uses brief text to present action: "Balls roll. Balls spin. Balls knock down bowling pins." The text leaps to life with Bronson's boldly colored figures frozen in action against color-saturated backgrounds. Viewers will have to work to interpret the abstract, aerial views of many pages, including a bowling lane whose sides intersect and some characters with heads and limbs akimbo, minimizing the value of these illustrations as textual decoding aids. Ant compares objects of increasing size, ranging from an ant to a berry, a mouse to a glass, and a blond boy to his big-sister narrator. Constantin's separately developed picnic story takes place in a soft, grassy meadow where an ant reclines on a red raspberry, a mouse darts by, a glass of lemonade spills, and a puppy peers into a wooden picnic basket while mom and dad are in the background. Circle describes a girl who uses shapes to build a rocket ship to fly to the moon. The child exudes confidence and enthusiasm as she adds a rectangle door, circle window, triangle wings, and a square engine to her creation. Readers will enjoy poring over the watercolor, pencil, and gouache illustrations where hard shapes contrast with soft and dappled backgrounds of night skies. In Number One Puppy, a girl and her mother visit the pound to select a pet to take home. The text describes litters of increasing sizes and offers a satisfying ending. Pertile's colored-pencil drawings present expressive close-ups of people and playful pups to illustrate the text in a joyful manner. Each volume has a statement to congratulate readers upon finishing the book, extension activities, and tips for parents.—Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI