LAWN TO LAWN

After their friend Pearl moves, four tacky lawn ornaments hit the road looking for her new home in Ritzy Estates. Betty (a deer), Flo (a flamingo), Norm (a garden gnome) and Jack (a jockey, Caucasian) must stick together during an arduous journey and evade the dreaded trash truck—once a trash truck takes an ornament, “it never comes back!” The colorful gang meets both creepy and helpful statuary along the way: Gargoyles follow them, gnomes offer assistance, a fast-food burger-boy points the way. Yaccarino offers young readers a world of cool duality, in which objects alternately talk, feel and move—and then don’t. Illustrations, although vivid, communicate only freeze-frame flatness, making the ornaments appear caught in halted animation and reinforcing the book’s magic. Bustling adults remain oblivious to the statues’ conversations, travels and communities, while child readers see everything. Young readers will relish experiencing and knowing something that adults do not or can not. Although many children might not have seen lawn ornaments before, Yaccarino’s endearing, earnest characters are worth getting to know. (Picture book. 4-8)