cover image Presto Change-o! A Book of Animal Magic

Presto Change-o! A Book of Animal Magic

Edouard Manceau. Twirl (Chronicle, dist.), $16.99 (20p) ISBN 978-2-8480-1944-4

French artist Manceau offers a delightful game of transformation in this large-format board book, in which everyday objects turn into animals via swiveling die-cut cardboard pieces. Manceau's flat, graphic images are ideally suited to the visual hook, and rhymes provide a hint of narrative ("A flower's petals form a ring, or is it more like a mane?"). There's something extremely pleasurable about flipping a green salad bowl upside down to become a turtle's shell or swinging a scalloped bar around to turn what were once the legs of a clock into an owl's feet. Ages 3-up. (Mar.)