STICKS

Sharp, full-color photographs of toddlers and preschoolers playing (safely) with sticks forms an eye-catching background to a brief and surprisingly informative text: “Trees hold their branches in the air. / After branches fall, they are sticks.” Uniformly adorable children demonstrate the many uses of sticks (walking, carrying, digging and splatting, making pictures, treats and trouble, among others). Unfortunately, the children pictured—the photographs are all from stock archives—are almost uniformly white; a couple are dark-skinned and only one is black. This defect runs through the entire Eyelike Nature series. Buy more Margaret Miller titles and skip these. Other titles include Stones (ISBN: 978-1-60214-100-1), Leaves (ISBN: 978-1-60214-101-8) and Snow (ISBN: 978-1-60214-102-5). (Ages 1-3)