OPPOSNAKES

Simple text and images come together in a collection of colorful legless reptiles against pure white backgrounds. Lift the two side-folding flaps of the “Dirty snake” to reveal the bubble-bathing of an exceedingly “Clean snake.” A quiet snake reveals a loud one, a cold snake a hot one, etc. Some opposites might raise the occasional eyebrow (“few snakes” might make a better opposite to “many snakes” rather than the “one snake” found here), and the pictures are cheery but almost too cartoonish in their simplicity. There is little interaction between each opposnake pairing, and when a group of them appears at the end of the book they are generic, not the interesting characters met previously. For collections in need of a straightforward lift-the-flap title about opposites, this one fulfills a need, if not a desire to see more. (Picture book. 3-6)