GUESS WHAT?—FRUIT

By lifting flaps, youngsters can transform fruit into animals.

A yellow pear lends its shape to a newly hatched chick, a banana becomes a duck’s bill, and a pineapple laid on its side becomes an armadillo’s crosshatched back. The effectively superfluous text repeats the same refrain on the left-hand side of each double-page spread: “Is it an apple? Guess what? Lift the flap....” A fully formed and easily recognizable fruit appears below the text. Across the page readers can see another image of the fruit, but this time, it is bifurcated by the flap. Under the flap, a critter is revealed, along with the answer: “It’s a monkey.” The sister title, Guess What?—Food, follows the same formula to the letter, but here, a variety of foods such as Swiss cheese, a loaf of bread and green squash turn into the critters—a giraffe, a dog and a frog respectively. In both titles, some of the transformations are more successful than others. The red apple morphs into the alarmingly red ear of an equally red-faced monkey, for instance. The final two pages of both titles review all the animals and many of the foods. Yonezu’s style, utilizing a thick, clumpy black line and bold, flat colors, is eye-catchingly simple without ever becoming boring.

Surprising and engaging.