TICKLY PRICKLY

Textured collages invite preschoolers to consider the sense of touch. In this Growing Tree entry, Becker uses simple rhymes to describe the feel of different creatures. "Tickly prickly. Fly away quickly," she says of a ladybug, while a toad feels "Muddy, bumpy. Warty, lumpy." Illustrations of the fuzzy wool of a sheep, smudgy wings of a moth, and opalescent scales of a fish all appear enticingly tactile, due to Halpern's astute use of unusual paper in the collages.