WHEN I GROW UP

Urging the Oshkosh set to start thinking about future careers, Louise pairs familiar animal activities to adult occupations—“If a spider can build a beautiful web . . . when I grow up, I can be an architect!”—but it’s the kaleidoscopic, super-bright illustrations that may linger longest with emergent and pre-readers. Placing simply drawn figures against contrasting or busily patterned backgrounds, Corwin offers visuals that are not only high-energy, but often create links between the animal and human examples that are not evident from the text. For instance, both sides of the spread captioned, “If a firefly can glow in the dark, I can shine on the silver screen!” glow with a similar palette of pink, yellow and orange. Though several parallels are rather questionable—particularly, “If an elephant can shake hands with its trunk, I can be president of the United States”—the idea here is less to make any informed decisions than to create a mind set—and (the depicted “president” being a woman) perhaps subvert a few expectations, too. (Picture book. 5-8)