ALL SHOOK UP!

Whimsical, big-eyed animals move to an Elvis beat with the lift or swing of a flap.

Unfortunately, serving as a professor of fine arts at the Beaux-Arts school in Châteauroux, France, for 10 years does not seem to have granted Crozon an understanding of age-appropriate design. The ideas are clever, but the execution is less so. The flaps in this and companion title Who’s There? are not sturdy, and many require two hands to manipulate. The arrows that provide directions to the flaps are of no use to young children and needlessly clutter the pages. Yes, pulling on a hippo's tongue and tugging on a donkey's legs to make him kick “back then front! Front then back!” are silly fun but probably beyond the manipulative skills of toddlers. The inevitable tears to the flaps will lead to inevitable tears. Most annoying of all are the stilted phrasing, vocabulary suited for adult readers rather than preschoolers, and the negative cautionary statements on several pages. Young children probably won't understand a warning to “take care not to become tongue-tied.” The best part of both books are the bright graphics rendered in yellow, orange, and turquoise.

Don't bother to lift these flaps.