Africa Calling, Nighttime Falling

This picture book starts off as a gallery of African animals seen in their natural habitat. Unusual artwork incorporates watercolors into a quasi-collage of dried leaves, flowers, herbs and spices. This creates an interesting range of textures and layers to serve as a setting, but watercolors of the animals themselves are less successful. They appear drab and overly simplified, neither particularly realistic nor dramatically stylized. An uninspired couplet introduces each animal (""From the highest point of the tallest tree,/ Monkey swings so gracefully"") while a stilted chant calls attention to the creature's most striking attributes (""massive, stunning/ rhinoceros running""). But a surprise at the end undoes the reader's assumptions: the scenarios have been imagined by a girl tucked in bed, surrounded by an African jungle's worth of stuffed toys. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)