Little Acorn Grows Up

This charming exploration of color—and of the mighty potential within one small acorn—offers a slightly more whimsical take on the animal kingdom than Gibbs’s I Spy with My Little Eye and I Spy Under the Sea. A parade of animals (a white mouse, an orange squirrel, and a blue bird, among them) visits the acorn, each asking, “What will you be?” The acorn’s promises (to provide shade for a gray rabbit or leaves for a red deer) come true in the final pages, when the acorn matures into a magnificent oak. Gibbs’s lightly caricatured and exuberantly inked animals have personality to spare as the book moves steadily toward its comforting conclusion. Ages 3–up. (Apr.)