BEA'S 4 BEARS

Off for a picnic, Bea leaves one of her four toy bears with her dog; then another needs a bath to get the peanut butter off his nose. That leaves one for Bea and one for friend Kay, who comes to play bears-in-a-cave; when Kay leaves, there's a heart- stopping moment when there seem to be ``ZERO'' bears, but they're soon found, one by one. Weston's informal illustrations are as appealing as her simple story; Bea is a lively, imaginative moppet who looks as huggable as her own well-loved bears. A satisfying story that is also a winning introduction to counting- -appropriate Arabic numerals and their equivalents in dots appear unobtrusively in the colored margins of each page. (Picture book. 2-6)