I Wish

This visually innovative book explores several hypothetical situations, each introduced by the words ``I wish'' presented in oversized type. Some of the narrator's yearnings are traditional (``I wish I were swimming in a deep blue sea!''; ``I wish I were flying so high in the sky!''), while others are more idiosyncratic (``I wish I were inside a color TV!''). After each wish is expressed, a turn of the page leads to a full-spread, vibrantly colored photograph in which Tofts has arranged fanciful collections of objects, somewhat in the manner of Walter Wick's compositions in the I Spy books. Superimposed against these surrealistic pictures are rather mediocre verses describing each venture into the imagination (the text for the wish to be inside a TV: ``Squiggly wires, colored lights,/ cars chasing cars,/ tigers, birds, and cowboy fights,/ rockets off to Mars!''). Graphically ambitious, but uneven as a whole. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)