cover image Eyes, Nose, Fingers, and Toes: A First Book All about You

Eyes, Nose, Fingers, and Toes: A First Book All about You

Judy Hindley. Candlewick Press (MA), $15.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-7636-0440-0

A celebration of the body and what it can do, this book careens from part to part with infectious enthusiasm. Hindley's (The Best Thing About a Puppy) text erratically bounces along in silly, free-spirited rhymes with a nod to Ruth Krauss's A Hole Is to Dig: ""Ears are to find at the sides of your head./ Are you wearing your ears today?/ Hurray!"" Granstr m's (The World Is Full of Babies) illustration shows a freckled boy talking into the long, droopy ear of a tail-wagging, alert basset hound. Changes in type size and alignment suggest motion, as in the lines ""Feet are for STOMPING/ and suddenly--/ STOPPING."" On the next page the pictured toddlers delight in falling ""BUMP!/ On our bottoms,/ side by side."" The artwork sets a multicultural crop of kids, toys and pets against a simple backdrop of child-like black crayon drawings and flat watercolor washes. The sunny toddlers (cute clothes, too) laugh, wriggle, stretch, reach and tickle to the accompaniment of the gleeful text. Ages 2-5. (June)