FARM

A split-page format invites mixing and matching pop-up beaks and muzzles on five farm animals.

Thanks to vertical labels placed as artfully as the central pop-ups, a “cow” gives way in predictable fashion to a “dog,” a “rooster,” “pig,” and so on—or, if just one of the sturdy half pages is turned, a “dow” or “row,” “pog” or “cooster,” etc., with likewise silly mismatched faces and bodies. The cog gazes earnestly out at viewers, wide eyes above a pop-up bovine nose on top, a pop-up border collie’s lower jaw, complete with canines and tongue, meeting it on the bottom. “MOO! WOLF!” it says. The rig is caught in full “COCK-A-OINK! the porcine lower jaw open wide beneath the top portion of the rooster’s beak. Along with comical sound effects, conventional or otherwise (“COCK-A-MOO!”), two flaps on each spread lift to reveal sprightly (uncredited) rhymes: “Out in the meadows / I chew and I munch. / Flowers and weeds / I will eat by the bunch!” The goat’s declaration that “my four sturdy hooves / help me climb to the sky” may require some adult amplification since Saldaña depicts the animal standing in a meadow, but that’s the only mismatch here that won’t set the Oshkosh set to giggling. The stock is fairly sturdy, so the book stands a good chance of lasting through a few careful spins through the permutations.

Unusually rich in wordplay as well as visual drollery.