Tell Me Another!: Read-Aloud Stories for the Very Young - Hardcover

Although the format is appealing (a collection of stories with die-cut picture tabs to allow young readers to find their favorites without any help), the pictures are charming, and the invitation to readers to create their own stories based on illustrated scenes is gratifyingly progressive, there's something a little unsettling about this collection. In almost every tale, someone gets attacked by a fox or a wolf or an alligator. And then in "Bears Don't Swim," a bear that cannot swim falls off a dock into the ocean (and quickly learns not only how to swim, but to love swimming). Of course, each story has a happy ending... sort of. After the alligator in the interactive story "The Old Alligator" eats three little terror-struck ducklings, he climbs ashore to digest. Just then a baby elephant comes along and squashes him flat (the instructions to readers are to "Slap your hands flat on your knees"), thus popping out the scared ducks ("clap, clap, clap"), which scamper back to Mommy as fast as they can. If children can get beyond the cartoon-style violence, they will enjoy peeking behind the doors in Price's version of "The Three Little Pigs" and will especially love Atsuko Morozumi's highly detailed, colorful four-season picture stories, "Wind," "Rain," "Snow," and "Sun." (Ages 4 and older) --Emilie Coulter

Mathew Price is the author of the very successful pop-up book Peekaboo!

Atsuko Morozumi is the author/illustrator of My Friend Gorilla.