HIDE & SEEK

Delicate, rickety, and very droll watercolors inject this buoyant tale with real presence. “I hide. You seek,” says a little trembling mouse to a bespectacled older woman, who may well not even know of the mouse’s existence. Then, in a twist on “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” the mouse makes off to hide from the woman. “1, 2. Tiptoe shoe. 3, 4. Creep to door. 5, 6. Old door sticks. 7, 8 Spy a crate. 9, 10. Quick! Dive in!” (That quote stretches across 10 pages, text written in huge letters across the bottom of each page, numbers on one side, words on the other.) The woman, who has been trying to discern where little squeaks are coming from (“Ready or not! Here I come!”), approaches the crate just when the mouse is taking a peek over the edge. Aye carumba! Here a giant nose and eyes face the mouse who’s about the size of the nose. The lady bolts and the mouse figures the game is afoot. “You leap, I shriek!” he squeaks. A slim tale, but clever and comical in how the mouse pulls the woman into the game. One can almost hear the shrieks of laughter from the audience. Tilley’s artwork is an enormous plus, with fine, wobbly lines and an up-close-and-personal point of view. (Picture book. 2-4)