cover image At Home

At Home

Anna Curti. Little Brown and Company, $5.95 (1pp) ISBN 978-0-316-16538-9

Featuring an animal family engaged in a variety of activities, each of these large-format volumes in the My First Word Book series contains five spreads on which objects and actions are labeled. The more inventive At Home occasionally groups words thematically; one spread illustrates several examples of the use of ``please'' and ``thank you,'' and another spotlights prepositions (``Teddy is on the bed''). Curiously, Seasons --in which a wolf family is pictured in four seasonal settings--contains no such word groupings. In both volumes, six panels at the top of the spreads relate stories that are often pointless. More useful are the safety tips sprinkled throughout the pages (``Don't touch the plug!''). Though kids will appreciate the appealingly crowded, brightly hued illustrations--and though parents will be grateful for the books' sturdy pages--these titles lack the inherent humor and zip of other first word books, notably Richard Scarry's classics. Ages 2-6. (Dec.)