HOW TO CLEAN A HIPPOPOTAMUS

Jenkins and Page team up in this packed-to-the-gills introduction to symbiosis. Tantalizing questions open the book, presenting readers with illustrations showing a giraffe with a bird in its ear, an alligator with a plover entering its toothy mouth and a turtle unabashedly swimming up to a gigantic hippopotamus. The illustrator’s familiar colorful and dramatic cut- and torn-paper illustrations are the stars of the book, but they are not displayed to their customary advantage. Pages are divided into smaller boxes, some with borders and others lying on top of the larger picture; the layout resembles a comic-book page more than anything else. The text is placed directly on top of the illustrations, running along the side or in separate boxes. The overall effect of each spread is busyness, and there is so much going on that it is difficult to know how to read some of the pages. Fewer examples per page would have allowed a more spacious design with larger illustrations and fewer text boxes, which would have benefited the intended audience. Tiny icons illustrate the three pages of fact-laden backmatter. (Informational picture book. 7-10)