Some of These Are Snails

Foregrounding brightly painted paper collage elements trimmed into crisp geometric shapes and placed on white backgrounds à la Eric Carle, this polished follow-up to Circle Under Berry again plays with visual images by challenging readers to classify them in various ways. Higgins composes a square blue owl with big googly eyes; the resulting shape might be categorized as blue, or an animal, or a square. Throughout, thumping, chantable lines (“big bigger biggest/ owl square purple”) explore sameness and variation, comparatives and quantifiers. A spread studded with various shapes asks, “Can you sort by color?// Can you sort by size?” Another spread features circle and square animals and shapes of sundry hues, asking “Can you sort by shape or/ find the animals with eyes?” And yet another juxtaposes striped tigers and spotted ladybugs: “Who’s stripiest?/ Who’s spottiest?” Alongside lines that veer into the whimsical realm of nonsense rhyme (“What is one?/ What is some?/ Where is all and/ where is none?”), largely accessible concept-based images and text promise wide read-and-respond appeal. Ages 2–4. Agent: Rubin Pfeffer, Rubin Pfeffer Content. (May)