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ANIMALS FOR SALE; TIC, TAC AND TOC; WHO'S THERE ? OPEN THE DOOR! by Bruno Munari

ANIMALS FOR SALE; TIC, TAC AND TOC; WHO'S THERE ? OPEN THE DOOR!

By

Pub Date: Oct. 21st, 1957
Publisher: World

Although the illustrations in these three purportedly whimsical books are brilliantly colored and the format is original, the board covers would not stand up under constant handling. Animals for Sale, suggests a flamingo, a porcupine, an armadillo, a centipede and similarly unfamiliar creatures to the child reader and capriciously resolves the choice with an answer to the question, ""What Do You Want?"" by answering ""Roast turkey and potatoes."" Tic Tac and Toc are caged birds who tell the stories of how they lost their freedom. The peek-through pages and pasted inserts are fun for children to manipulate and the story of the three birds is more satisfactory than Animals for Sale. Who's There, Open the Door' shows Lucy the giraffe with a crate from Lisbon. (To open the crate, the reader turns a medium sized page in the big book. There he finds Peggy the zebra with a trunk from Paris. Again he turns the page, this time still smaller -- to meet Leo the Lion with his valise, and so on down to a tiny insert with an ant carrying grain.) There is no stitching in these play books -- only reenforced spines. To those who remember the generation long popularity of The Hole Book, these may have a nostalgic, playbook appeal.