TEN ON THE SLED

A caribou, polar bear, moose, wolf, walrus, squirrel, bighorn sheep, fox, hare and seal all pile onto a toboggan, beginning a North Country riff on the familiar chant: “There were TEN on the sled / and the caribou said, / ‘Slip over! Slide over!’ / So they all slid over, / and Seal spilled out.” One by one, the animals tumble off, each with a different active verb (Hare hops out, Sheep shoots out, Walrus whirls out, etc.). The final line of each stanza is printed with lively disorder, swooping, jumping and sliding on the page. Woodruff adds extra humor by collecting all of the fallen animals in an increasingly bigger snowball that rolls down the hill alongside the toboggan. What with animal identification, counting, vocabulary building and print awareness all scaffolded on a can’t-lose rhyme, this one’s a keeper. (Picture book. 3-6)