ONE THOUSAND THINGS

Familiar figures and concepts depicted in a simple graphic style invite very young children to catalog and identify many of the items they might encounter in their everyday worlds.

Kövecses concocts a visual banquet for toddlers and ex-toddlers who delight in pointing and naming. Opening each double-page spread with a leading question—“What are these different shapes?” “What are your five senses?” “What animals live in the sea?” “What can you see in the bedroom?”—she presents uncrowded arrays of easily recognizable objects or activities with attached labels. The arrangement is thematic, with sections ranging from “First Things To Learn" and “Things To Do With You” to “Things Inside Your House” and “Things Outside Your House.” Along with being highly selective, the images are occasionally stylized to the point of oversimplification, such as a rainbow with but five colors and a figure of a woman labeled as a rear view that could as easily be frontal. Still, the artist slips in horizon-broadening entries like “dinosaur,” “astronaut,” “tongue,” and “pickle,” as well as departing from convention, at least a little, by varying the skin colors in a gallery of career possibilities and an extended family portrait.

Not a radical departure from similar primary-level catalogs but still useful for building both verbal and visual working vocabularies.