cover image This Way, That Way

This Way, That Way

Anne Louchard. Minedition (IPG, dist.), $9.99 (18p) ISBN 978-988-8341-41-2

The quirky question driving this board book—“How does a giraffe sleep?”—appears on its cover, which includes a flap that unfolds vertically to reveal the extreme length of one such animal’s neck. Inside, the narrator posits various answers (“Perhaps he rests his neck in a tree?”), but each one is shot down (“No, that would make him cough”). Louchard’s airy cartoons put the yellow giraffe through the wringer, almost literally, as it sleeps with its neck entwined with that of another giraffe and stretched out to create a hammock, among other goofy scenarios. “Isn’t guessing fun?” asks the narrator toward the end of a book that’s less about right answers than imaginative possibilities. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)