TUB TOYS

With a passion approaching that of Ernie for his rubber ducky, the young narrator extols the joys of trotting out so many tub toys at bathtime that "there's not a spot for me!" As ablution accoutrements accumulate, first-time illustrator Calderon's digital pictures employ the kind of exaggerated, plasticine-textured characterizations (complete with oversize heads), vertiginous perspectives (one of which displays the narrator's skinny rear to great comic effect) and vaguely retro gestalt that will make fans of Nickelodeon animation feel right at home. Among the many sight gags are the boy's Rube Goldberg–like contraptions; he uses a toy crane to lower his "windup froggy friend" into the drink and devises an elaborate conveyor belt to ease the embarkation of the rest of his animal figures (as well as the family dog). In rhyming text, Shannon and Warner, a mother/son team also making their children's book debut, alternate between enumerating ever-escalating groups of toys and adding in the child's last-minute inspirations ("Four blocks fall through the foam, / And I can't forget my astronaut/ inside his spaceship home"), so that readers can't keep track any better than the narrator. Ultimately, the words, set in a bouncy, 1960s-styled typeface, function more as visual punctuation than narrative engine anyway—it's in Calderon's over-the-top pictures that the fun runneth over. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)