Tell Me Another!: Read-Aloud Stories for the Very Young

Price's (Peekaboo!) collection of a handful of tales suggests different approaches to storytelling. Two tales are traditional narratives of realization: ""Will You Be My Friend?"" tells of a lonely chick who discovers that while he can't find many animals to play with, they do come to his rescue when he really needs them; ""Bears Don't Swim"" stars a water-wary hero who finds out ""that he loved swimming as much as--well, as much as honey sandwiches."" Four full-bleed, wordless ""story pictures"" show off the volume's greatest strength: Morozumi's (My Friend Gorilla) artwork, depicting a quartet of different climates (a sunny jungle, a windy park). The pi ce de r sistance is a cutaway spread of Noah's Ark in the rain: Noah's family mingles with free-reigning animals, laundry dries inside on the line and gorillas warm by a fire. A few of the animal pairs are separated (Noah's wife talks to a mouse perched on the window sill while its mate hangs out a couple levels below), making for a fun game of match-ups. Flaps in the final story reveal a menacing wolf's meager disguises as he tries to trick a family of pigs into letting him into their house. It's an uneven but playful potpourri of tales, but the paintings of appealing cuddly and downy creatures are consistently captivating. Ages 1-5. (Mar.)