Who Hops?

The silly premise of this entertaining book follows a list of three animals that hop, fly, swim or crawl with one that obviously does not, enabling kids to participate by catching the ""mistake."" For example, the response to ""Who slithers?"" includes ""Salamanders slither./ Snakes slither./ Snails slither./ Elephants slither."" The next page sets the record straight--""NO THEY DON'T! Elephants have hairy babies and wiggly trunks, but they don't slither""--and the elephant is rolling on the ground in laughter, saying ""Me? Slither? C'mon! You're cracking me up."" Debut author-artist Davis juxtaposes pages with two words of text against those pages bearing lengthier, lighthearted explanations of why certain animals are misfits in a given grouping. The illustrations feature oversize, heavily outlined and extremely simplified shapes (the spider and crab are almost identical), in loud solid colors including goldenrod, hot pink, red, kelly green and purple. For kids, the book's main pleasure is likely to be shouting out ""NO THEY DON'T!"" before the adult reading aloud to them can turn the page. Ages 2-6. (Sept.)