READ IT, DON’T EAT IT!
by Ian Schoenherr and illustrated by Ian Schoenherr
The appealing cover is sure to entice young hands to reach for this preschooler’s primer on how to treat books and behave in libraries. Jauntily dressed animals demonstrate 15 caveats with the fuzzy bear from the cover acting as top banana throughout. The rhyming dos and don’ts are printed in a very large font on the left page while the right side visually demonstrates: “Find someplace else to sneeze” shows a denim-wearing elephant holding a book to its mouth and sneezing through its trunk; “Be careful with it at the pool” has a hippo wearing a green-on-yellow polka-dot swimsuit holding a book while floating on a rubber raft; “Don’t overdue it, just renew it” finds the bear staggering under a tall load of books. The clean ink-and-acrylic illustrations, akin to the author/illustrator’s Cat and Mouse (2008), are pleasingly playful, with white type on the verso color pages contrasting with the brightly colored scenes set against white backgrounds on the recto. Ideal for preschool storytimes; librarians will love it (although they might have to explain “Don’t censor, delete, or deface”). (Picture book. 2-5)