HIDE & SEEK

“Cookie time is the perfect time for hide-and-seek. Dad, don’t peek!” While the cookies are baking and Dad is counting to ten, a lad searches for the perfect hiding place—hindered by a canine companion: “No, not the trash can—you want to stink? / It might be okay to hide under the sink. . . . ” Big figures set off by white borders in Chodos-Irvine’s saturated colors for silkscreen-style scenes as boy and dog hunt through house and yard, trying and rejecting one possible hidey-hole after another, finding a place just as Dad reaches “Ten!,” then waiting for the oven’s “Bing!” to emerge and to chow down. Wong’s poetic count creates a yummy, intimate addition to the host of other hide-and-seeks, from Lesléa Newman’s Where Is Bear?, illus by Valeri Gorbachev (2004), on down. (Picture book. 4-6)