A SOCK IS A POCKET FOR YOUR TOES

In bubbly verse and playful imagery reminiscent of Mary Ann Hoberman’s classic A House Is a House For Me (1978), Scanlon expands the idea of a “pocket” to include bowls, balloons, and bathtubs, hats, horseshoes, homes, and more: “A phone is a pocket / for a ring, / a bell is a pocket / for a ding. / A pocket for a duckling is a shell, / and a pocket for a farmer is a dell— / hi ho.” Glasser sends a diverse quartet of families with young children through a day of shared and individual encounters with all of these pockets, depicting figures and settings in various combinations with typically fine, sketchy, exuberant pen work. Tucked in with the closing thought that hearts are pockets full of love, the children at last snuggle into their beds—leaving young readers and listeners seeing their own worlds in a new way, and primed for Ruth Krauss’s antediluvian, but still mind-expanding A Hole Is to Dig (1952). (Picture book. 6-8)