GIGGLY-WIGGLY, SNICKETY-SNICK

You can tell that Supraner has made a rudimentary effort to give her concept book some extra-curricular appeal. Her unsurprising representations of sharp, sticky, cold, crunchy, and eleven other ""feel"" words contain much alliteration (fingerpaints are squiggle squishy), rhymed words (cookies with raisins are lumpy bumpy, streets can be humpy bumpy), and whole verses: ""Fire is hot. The stove is hot./Water in a pot is hot./ Boiling hot. Bubbling hot./ Don't touch Hot. It hurts a lot."" And there's an air of informality (""One thing about hard: YOU CAN'T SQUASH IT"") that encourages emulation. But her more overt bids for participation cloy. (""Tell me a secret. How soft is a whisper? Oh, that's soft."") And her imagery ranges downwards from the barely serviceable examples quoted above to the commonplace citation of a chick, feather, cotton candy on a stick, baby duck, cloud, and dandelion for--guess what--""fluffy."" Similarly, Tusan's collages might seem disarmingly non-didactic at a quick first glance, but on a second they're even less interesting than the words.