cover image Circles and Squares Everywhere!

Circles and Squares Everywhere!

Max Grover. Harcourt Children's Books, $17 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-15-200091-2

The grand, oversized square format of this book makes up in size what the premise lacks in substance, offering suitable space for Grover's (The Accidental Zucchini) exuberant, full-bleed acrylic paintings. The scant, cumulative text (""Tires and Cars""; ""Tires and Cars and Trucks""; ""Tires and Cars and Trucks and Roads"") says what the pictures show-like Mary Serfozo and David A. Carter's more whimsical There's a Square (Children's Forecasts, Jan. 15), these use the simplest graphic terms to demonstrate the presence of circles and squares in everyday objects. Though there is much repetition of imagery, mostly travel- and traffic-related, Grover's fanciful, full-strength palette gives an ordinary cityscape an improbably colored, toy-like appearance. Lime, lavender and sky-blue skyscrapers tower over turquoise docks where mango and brick-red boats unload square fuchsia cargo. While the pictures may generate initial interest from a range of readers, the overall delivery is best suited to the youngest members of the target audience-those just learning the basics of shapes, and likeliest to appreciate the various views of more or less the same things. Ages 3-5. (Apr.)