SOMETIMES I WONDER IF POODLES LIKE NOODLES

Unlike Numeroff’s other flights of fancy (If You Give a Pig a Pancake, 1998, etc.), this collection of silly verse starring a bespectacled blonde is uneven, and often forced. “I don’t know the answers,/I haven’t got a clue./It’s just fun to wonder,/Do you do it, too?” The question neither provokes nor inspires the imagination; it just lies there. On Halloween, “This year I’m going as corn on the cob./Making my costume was quite a hard job./I pasted hundreds of squares onto my clothes./I’m covered with them from my head to my toes.” A few (too few) of the shorter poems have verve and a funny, childlike sensibility, such as the one about a dog named Sydney: “He’s got a million spots./I think it would be fun to try/connecting all his dots.” Bowers’s oil illustrations have a fuzzy familiarity, exude a natural gaiety, and enliven the imagery of young girl enjoying every waking moment. (Picture book. 4-8)