ANIMALS

Budding naturalists can place 45 animals with magnetic backings on any of five double-page habitats.

Visible through a large hole cut into the front cover, the animals come out of a reusable storage pocket inside and are both identified and arranged into related groups at the back. In between, readers find polar, savanna, coral-reef, temperate-forest, and rainforest scenes with several creatures in view. Brief observations that serve as prompts (“Look! A wild boar is taking her young to look for mushrooms”) offer plenty of space to arrange and rearrange the magnetized additions. The overall look is bright and benign. Aside from a mention that forest animals eat “berries, bugs, and small creatures” and one glimpse of a friendly-looking cheetah loping unthreateningly after an antelope, there is no reference to predation anywhere, and all of Tisserand’s wildlife, even birds and fish, are smiling. They are, however, small enough to make the choke-hazard warning on the back cover cogent. Though a good shake may well send them flying, the creatures are magnetic enough to stay in place when the book is held up or laid on a tilted surface. They will stick to a refrigerator too, though not firmly enough to hold anything. There are no human figures in the art.

An attractive (in both senses) early foray into the wild world.