Color Magic

Call it a book or a toy, this meticulously engineered title will thrill art-loving, visually oriented children (and their parents). A sturdy pocket inside the back cover holds 2,000 translucent, easily reusable stickers in a host of basic geometric shapes and sizes (think of classic Colorforms); in standard printers' versions of red (magenta), blue (cyan) and yellow, the stickers can be overlapped to produce secondary colors—it's instant color theory, literally at a child's fingertips. To jump-start readers' imaginations, the book's heavy, laminated pages contain examples of complicated figures assembled from the shapes (rocket ships, animals, scarecrows); extrapolating, precocious children might begin to recognize geometric shapes as fundamental elements in the objects around them. Other spreads evoke backdrops via a few gray lines and one or two objects that could be replicated with the stickers (the printed colors are exact matches for the stickers, too). Unobtrusive, deceptively basic questions on these spreads stretch a younger child's thinking: “Can you add more trees to make a forest? What animals live in the forest?” Blank pages invite unfettered play. Car trip, anyone? Ages 5–up. (Nov.)