BE CURIOUS!

A yellow cat leads readers through a world of color in this lift-the-flap book that is nominally about the five senses.

First, cat and readers follow a blue rabbit through a black “magical door” flap covering a die cut that leads into a room decorated for a birthday party, complete with a rainbow of hats, a ceiling crowded with multicolored balloons, and a speaker spewing a dancing pattern of musical notes. In this spread, the rhyming text asks children to talk about what they listen to that makes them dance and points out the color pink. This textual pattern continues, as the yellow cat smells and tastes cakes and cookies that are yellow, sees party hats stacked on the head of an orange squirrel, and feels a “cool breeze” blow through a blue sky. The flaps are well designed and easy for small hands to manipulate. Stalker’s illustrations make clever use of patterns that are sure to appeal to young, curious eyes. While the text is musically written and the illustrations are beautifully textured, the book doesn’t quite meet its educational potential. The color noted on each page, for example, is not always the dominant hue and therefore may be difficult for children to identify. The five senses are woven into most pages but not every page and therefore feel tenuously connected. Overall, though, the story is charming and the pictures enjoyable regardless of the educational message’s execution.

This colorful and clever tale may miss the educational mark but nails the entertainment.