TWINKLE

For his dos-a-dos debut volume, Fischer starts two parallel plot lines at opposite ends that meet in a big foldout scene in the middle. Using the same text for both—the full, five-verse version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”—he follows, on the one hand, a blue-haired, space-suited alien who rockets into the starry sky aboard a jet-assisted wooden boat, and on the other, a pajama-clad human lad who does the same on a flying tricycle. Both travelers have the same grins and big, green, twinkly eyes, both experience excitingly explosive accidents that leave their respective vessels in pieces and, after meeting in mid-space, both zoom off together on a “ship” cobbled together from the parts. The language is genteel, and the faces of the two voyagers add a cutesy note, but the art’s intense colors and high-energy action more than compensate. A natural for budding astronauts. (Picture book. 4-6)