FOR KIDS ONLY

The title of this fat, wordless collection of full-page black and white photos (some 500 in all) might be a necessary precaution, as its dimensions peg it for an adult collection. Certainly the weight alone makes it cumbersome for small children, though the introduction by education professor Charles Reasoner suggests it as prereading training. What fun there is comes from the minisequences, bunched associations, and juxtapositions: there's a series on bananas from tree to mouth; a page of fingers facing one of carrots, a pineapple facing a pine cone, and different animals facing On both senses of the word) and following each other; also clumps of towers, clowns, fish, spiral forms, children at play, etc. They're put together with an active eye and a light touch; no one making the book directs the attention or prescribes the response (as for example Tana Hoban does so well in her younger, clearer photo-concept projects) and no one using it with kids should. Just leave it around, to be shuffled through, in passing.