FIND A FACE

Striking a blow for animists everywhere, the authors find faces—wonderfully expressive ones, too—in such common household or industrial items as cheese-graters, clamps, a cookie-cutter, a chair, and a mop. Each is portrayed in a big, bright, page-filling color photo against a blank background, identified on its page in a tiny upside-down key (“We’re paper clips!” “I’m a wrench!”), and accompanied by a short, bouncy rhyme in very big type: “We’re orange, / yellow, / blue and / brown. / Sometimes we are upside down!” Unlike the familiar edible art of Saxton Freymann’s Dr. Pompo’s Nose (2000), etc., there are no physical alterations; it’s all done with angles and lighting. From die-cut front cover to the closing “Need to find a friendly face? / Look around, we’re everyplace!,” this presents pre-readers with the most irresistible invitation since Stephen Johnson’s Alphabet City (1995) to see their world through new eyes. (Picture book. 3-5)