Whose Nose Do You Suppose?

The perennially popular “guess who?” story device is reiterated with a painterly and poetic touch in this volume. A page presents a zoomed-in view of a nose, rendered by Tolland with artistry, paired with the question, “Whose nose do you suppose?” Readers turn the page to see a full illustration of the animal in question alongside a short rhyming text with a few basic facts about its physiology, habitat, and behavior. Unfortunately, banal rhymes and occasionally stale perspectives hobble the poems: of meerkats, “In faraway Africa, you will find this nose/ where it’s dusty and dry and not much grows”; of the ostrich, “From wildest Africa/ this nose first came,/ now found ‘round the world, such is its fame.” The mismatch between the accomplished illustrations and the lackluster text yields an uneven result. Ages 3–5. (Nov.)