Alfred's Camera: A Collection of Picture Puzzles

The reader is asked to help as Alfred the dog searches in his various collections for his missing camera so he can take a picture of his best friend Sport before Sport's birthday party.

PreSchool-Grade 3?In this seek-and-find book, Alfred, a pointer dog, is a photographer who always puts things where they don't belong and has misplaced his camera. He wants to take a photo of his friend, Sport, a terrier, and leads readers through nine picture puzzles as he searches for his missing camera. Each photo-collage puzzle of similar items (teddy bears, seashells, dog bones) hides incongruous objects that readers are encouraged to find based on the brief text. For instance, in a collage of keys, observant readers find "two whistles, a silver spoon, a horseshoe, a shiny chain, some scissors, and a spiraled shell." The refrain, "But WHERE IS ALFRED'S CAMERA?" is repeated on each page until, in the last puzzle, the missing item is found among "his collection of threads and yarns." The hidden objects are cleverly concealed in the hand-tinted photographs. Gold-framed insert photos of Alfred on each page reveal an acquiescent, humorous pooch who sports a pink bow tie, balances a tin cup on his head, and patiently stands at attention. Fans of Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick's "I Spy" books (Scholastic), as well as readers who appreciate William Wegman's photographs of his weimaraners are sure to enjoy this title.?Shawn Brommer, Southern Tier Library System, Painted Post, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ellwand moves away from the stunning black-and-white portraiture of Emma's Elephant (1997) and The Big Book of Beautiful Babies (1996) for this series of hand-tinted, find-the-hidden-items photo collages, tied together with an unobtrusive plotline involving the photographer's long-suffering pointer (posed, early William Wegman style, with various objects balanced on his head), another shutterbug, searching through huge jumbles of keys, seashells, dog biscuits, toy trucks, brushes, and the like for a lost camera. The palely colored pictures present easier visual challenges than those in Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick's I Spy series, not to mention Martin Handford's Where's Waldo and its offspring, and so should draw younger--or should that be less obsessive?--browsers. John Peters