I SAW AN ANT IN A PARKING LOT

Displaying a positive zest for partial rhymes, broken rhythms and ornate phrasing (“O faster ant! O tire not! / O tire turn / unless you blot / the living, breathing life out of / a hungry ant in danger caught!”), Prince is likely to lose the audience he engaged with the tripping, tickety-tackety verse of I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track (2006). Here he sends the same oblivious ant wandering out into a parking lot, where it again faces annihilation (from a minivan rather than a locomotive), but is saved at the last instant (also as before) by a tasty snack—this one a chocolate doughnut thrown by an observant attendant. Rendered with a slightly unfocused, computer-generated look and fish-eye lens perspectives, the art centers on a miniscule California Raisin–style ant with big brown eyes, human teeth and white gloves capping its top four limbs. He wanders across wide open pavement and, at the end, sits possessively atop a luscious-looking doughnut that is the best thing in this uninspired reprise. (Picture book. 6-8)