The Best Kind of Kiss

Standing on a soapbox, the winsome narrator declares, “I like kisses.” That’s an understatement, considering the pages that follow find her requesting kisses from King Kong (“big kisses”), a chicken (“pecky kisses”), a lion (“fluffy kisses”), and a best friend after they’ve dumped bowls of food on each other’s head (“sorry kisses”). Allum’s text is fairly restrained, considering the subject matter, which allows Bentley (Have You Seen Duck?) to flex his sweetly loopy imagination and invent a heroine who is an indomitable icon of kissing. Her tiny body has a comic grace as she perches on a tree branch, balances on a ladder, or sits atop a snowman to offer the falling flakes “a frosty kiss.” (Oh, and that “best” kiss? It’s a “great big bristly-growly-daddy kiss!”) The girl’s oversize head, topped with a big bow, is often tilted at an angle of loving supplication; she wears a perpetual pucker, and her eyes are almost always closed to convey blissful anticipation. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone else in the world who likes kisses half as much—which, of course, is the whole point. Ages 3–6. (Dec.)