One Hole in the Road

On the jacket of this vigorous counting book, and on the safety barricades painted inside, diagonal yellow-and-black stripes signal that men and women are working. The titular ""one hole in the road"" is a lollapalooza, requiring no fewer than ""Four stoplights flashing,/ Five sirens blaring,/ Six worried engineers huddling nearby."" Construction crews carrying shovels and wrenches rush to stop ""eight water pipes gushing"" and ""nine storefronts flooding, Oh, my!"" With just a few choice words, Nikola-Lisa (Being with You This Way) enables readers to imagine the clattering noise and busy site. Yaccarino (If I Had a Robot) focuses on the eye-catching hues of a red, gold and green stoplight or a pumpkin-orange jumpsuit; his natural-beige background and stripped-down, blocky people, cars and buildings resemble the stencil-like style of Michael Bartalos's Shadowville. Although text and images are orderly and direct, they nonetheless convey a disorderly city scene, full of punchy color and determined workers leaping to and fro. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)