TINY TOWN

A hip kid gives readers a tour of the titular, diminutive town.

Each double-page spread represents a different “Tiny” location, including a bakery, a pet store, a bookstore, and a floral shop. The tour guide appears on every page and has a strange grayish-tan complexion. A die-cut window appears on every page and gives readers a glimpse of what is to come. While Ultman’s graphic style, which employs pastel colors and whimsical lines, can be clever, much of the art will be too small for both toddler and adult eyes to fully appreciate. Captions are teeny, and the objects themselves, such as the pink mustache the tour guide dons in the dress-up section at the toy store or the key to this resident’s “Tiny Home,” are so small as to make them difficult to classify. Other things and animals are so stylized they challenge identification: the toy-store blocks look like dollhouses, and many of the foods in the grocery store will be a stretch for toddlers to name. In the companion book, Tiny Farm, a youngster with white skin, bobbed black hair, and a yellow dress shows readers such tiny farm locales such as the horse stall, the pigpen, and the “Tiny You-Pick Patch.” While the board pages are substantially thick, the thinnish binding may prove to be what shortens the life spans of both titles.

Eyestrain-inducing.