HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpty Dumpty ($12.99; Oct. 1996; 10 pp.; 0-525-67540-X): Here's one version of this verse where the egg hero doesn't end up scrambled! Bold, three-dimensional pop-ups are big, clear, and solidly engineered, to survive a fair amount of toddler use and abuse. The familiar story and the paper mechanics flow easily, so that children who know the lines by heart will find themselves ``reading'' and turning pages at exactly the right moment. While there's a scant number of pages, all are loaded with details: castle turrets, toys, soldiers, royalty, and the beaming eggman himself. Readers will linger over each tableau on the page as if it were a landscape. (Pop-up. 2-4)