GIANT STEPS

A quintet of infectiously grinning behemoths, a well-delivered punch line, and an unexplained joke left for young readers or listeners to figure out on their own buoy this globe-spanning game of “Giant Steps.” After a round of “One potata, two potata,” which for some reason the fifth giant always loses, his oversized, peg-toothed compatriots, dressed in a variety of ragged skins and fleeces, scatter to the cardinal directions. Loredo sends her giants bounding off in a tumble of inventive usage and dropped letters—“He run out over jaggy-tip mountains and bottomless pools and shaggy sheep roamin’ through spittin’ camel herds…”—until the fifth giant finishes counting and bellows out a stentorian “FREEZE!” that brings the whole world to a stop. But, as ever, he’s still IT at game’s end—which all agree is a good thing, as (wait for it) he’s the only one of the five who can count. A cheerful, Bunyanesque episode that, like Loredo’s Boogie Bones (1997), begs to be read aloud. (Picture book. 7-9)