Surprise, Surprise!

It's party time in this festive lift-the-flap book. Readers try to identify the contents of 10 brightly wrapped presents, and since each gift has a different size and shape, the guessing game is quite a challenge. Rogers's rhyming, exclamatory text encourages the curious--``Unwrap and see!'' ``Take a good look''--and suggests possible answers: ``It must be small. An apple perhaps?'' One by one the unwrapped and identified items accumulate on the left-hand side of each spread, while the pile of mysterious packages on the right shrinks. Tucker's bold, uncomplicated contours and perky palette stand in crisp contrast to the ample white backgrounds. Happily, this volume is more complex than most in the genre, adroitly exhibiting the concepts of counting, color and shape recognition that are appropriate for children at varying stages of development. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)