TOUCH AND FEEL FARM

Cool pastels and sleek, highly graphic lines give visual heft to this brief, tactile tour of the farm. The sheep on the cover sports fuzzy fleece, the barn is made of vertically oriented brown corrugated “wood,” the pig features a patch of touch-it-again moleskin, the tractor is equipped with a marvelously rubbery-feeling tire, the hens walk across a corkboard-like yard and the cow’s brown spot is a soft terrycloth. If the touch-and-feel elements are superior to many of their ilk, however, the text is not, achieving rhyme but not much meaning: “Feel the GROUND. / Hens run around. // Touch the COW. / Do it now.” This flaw, combined with the low-contrast palette, makes this one a miss. A companion, Count (ISBN: 978-1-934706-75-6), shares this book’s visual sensibility, but not its tactile aspect. (Ages 6-18 mos.)