Acorns Everywhere!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that squirrels obsessively bury nuts and then promptly forget where they put them. Sherry's (I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean) comically frenetic cartooning is ideally suited to this premise, and he heightens the totemic desirability of the acorns by rendering them in photographic cutouts ("I must hide them," the wide-eyed squirrel says, staring at readers with the utmost seriousness and intensity). But while Sherry's bold colors, large-scale images and exclamatory text have lots of get-up-and-go ("Gather! Dig! Bury!" is the squirrel's refrain as he nabs acorns from other creatures), the story devolves into a lame homophonic joke: for a second, it looks like a large brown bear might just "bury" the squirrel, but it turns out he's just after a "berry" snack of his own. The squirrel then abruptly decides that those are just fine for sating his appetite, too, and his cycle of thievery restarts. Ages 3%E2%80%945. (Sept.)