FLIP FLAP FARM

“What crazy creatures will you meet today?”

Scheffler illustrates a series of bouncy two-verse poems about animals, with verses on the left-hand page and pictures on the right. And there’s a “flip-flap” twist: Each right-hand page is split in half; turning a flap to the left changes each pictured animal considerably. (The spiral binding and sturdy stock make this task easy for young readers.) Starting with the cow—“I’m beautiful! My nose is pink, / I have lovely big brown eyes. / I swish my tail from side to side / to keep away the flies”—pulling the top half yields the upper half of a pink pig with a mottled bovine bottom half, udder and all! Turning still more flaps brings up a rooster, lamb, horse or squirrel for the top half. There are 11 individual animals in all, bringing the number of possible combinations to well over 100. And each crazy creature has a different name. That oinker with udders is called a pow. There’s also a cabbit (cow/rabbit), a moat (mouse/goat) and a hirrel (horse/squirrel). And on and on and on.

Bold colors, phonetically zippy rhymes, sturdy book construction and countless creature combinations are a winning formula for beginning readers and storytimers.