On Our Way to the Forest!

Virtually guaranteed to entertain its audience, this pair of paperbacks combines zippy text and amiable art with reusuable stickers--each book contains two sets of almost a dozen different stickers. Forest opens with the question ``What kind of noisy can you be?'' then supplies various possibilities: ``Can you growl like a bear? / Croak like a frog? / Gnaw like a beaver chewing on a log?'' Water concentrates on movement: ``Can you dance like a lobster? / Can you make a turtle trek? / Or like the eight-legged octopus / Twist with every step?'' Taback shows each creature as it is introduced--his renderings are suggestive rather than lifelike, but he limits anthropomorphism to his depictions of the animals' facial expressions. What most kids will like best, however, are the pages of stickers, essentially smaller reproductions of Taback's forest- and water-dwellers. Several spreads at the end depict woodland and marine settings, respectively; the text invites readers to use these pages and the stickers to make ``pictures you like.'' Ages 3-6. (June)