FORTUNE COOKIES

Seven fortune cookies guide a young child through an eventful week in this elegantly spare collaboration between a debut author and a Caldecott Medal–winning illustrator.

Sliding out of its cookie with the pull of a tab that is the sole type of engineered effect, each fortune presages a subsequent occurrence. Sunday’s “Today you will lose something you don’t need” leads to a lost tooth and a dollar, for instance, and Monday’s “Money is like the wind” induces the young narrator—depicted in Raschka’s usual broad, Zen-like brushwork as a girl with orange locks over apple cheeks and a bright red shift—to buy a kite. Subsequent fortunes lead to a cat that vanishes, but then after a rainy day and a wish on a falling star (“Be careful what you wish for”) it reappears. With seven kittens. “All my fortunes are here to stay!” the child gleefully concludes, naming each kitten after a day of the week. Only carping critics (and dismayed parents) will wonder what happens next.

A buoyant celebration of pure, unalloyed joy. (Pop-up picture book. 4-7)