THE WONDERFUL BOOK

Woodland critters utilize a found object while Gore plays gently with metatextuality. When readers see a rabbit’s new find, they'll know it’s a book, but rabbit sees only that it can be propped open like a house, with the spine as the roof peak. He happily wriggles inside. Big growly bear steals it and spreads it open across his head for a hat. Mice sit around it as a table. A sleepy fox reclines atop some pages and closes the cover over himself like a blanket. The meta-layers seem consistent at two (Gore’s book about a book) until they reach an unexpected third level: A boy picks up the codex and reads it aloud to the curious animals, who hear themselves portrayed as characters inside the very book they’ve all been using. Unpretentious watercolor-and-ink illustrations on textured paper suit well, because both text and pictures have a light, unfussy vibe—even while puns lurk unstated, such as the fox treating sheets of paper as bedsheets. Children just beginning to recognize books as objects will appreciate the animals’ confusion and their own advanced understanding. (Picture book. 2-5)