INVISIBLE

In this near-wordless exercise in graphic design, cartoon figures sporting grotesquely pink noses seem to gain or lose body parts or various articles of clothing by moving onto identically colored backgrounds between one spread and the next. Sets of disembodied faces, hands and feet turn into nuns in purple habits; an invisible black bicyclist hits an invisible black tree; a girl trips over a mustard-colored dog, revealed (urinating) by a turn of the page. Closing with a grinning lad who sheds all of his clothing and totally disappears into a flesh-toned spread, this may elicit chuckles from young readers, but it comes off as a one-trick pony next to the color effects in the likes of Justine Fontes’s Black Meets White, illus by Geoff Waring (2005). (Picture book. 6-8)