Look-Alikes Jr: Find More Than 700 Hidden Everyday Objects

Simple verses challenge readers to identify the everyday objects used to construct eleven three-dimensional scenes, including a house, kitchen, bedroom, school bus, train, farm, and rocket.

PreSchool-Grade 3 Similar in format to Look-Alikes (Little, Brown, 1998), this title is intended for a slightly younger audience. The cover indicates that there are "more than 700 hidden everyday objects" as compared with 1000 items in the original. A minimal rhyming text gives clues as to the cleverly concealed tools, foodstuffs, etc., contained within the scenes of familiar settings such as a kitchen, a school bus, and a classroom. The well-composed, full-color photographic layouts are perhaps slightly less full and complex than those in the first book, but are in many ways comparable. The latter portion of the book outlines the rules for playing the look-alike game along with keys to the objects contained within each of the pictures. This title is sure to be a hit with the same children who relish the "I Spy" series (Scholastic). Rosalyn Pierini, San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Steiner is just as imaginative with this series of vignettes, aimed at a younger audience, as she was in her startling debut, Look-Alikes. Designed on a slightly larger, less intricate scale than those in her first book, these scenes will be familiar to children, from domestic settings (e.g., a kitchen and bedroom) to a classroom, farmyard, construction siteAeven a blastoff into space. But in Steiner's hands, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Common household objects once again do double duty, appearing as something else entirely: mini-blinds become the clapboard siding on a house; upended dog biscuits topped with a comb make a nifty school bench and a farmer drives a tractor and plow made from a tape dispenser and hair clip, among other things. Rhyming couplets introduce each scene, clueing readers in to one of the visual ringers ("Here's the school bus, right on time./ Each rearview mirror looks like a DIME") and setting them up to hunt for more (some 50 appear in each photograph). This stellar sequel will have perceptive readers staring at spreads for hours over many repeated readings. All ages. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Steiner brings the dazzling ingenuity of her debut, Look-Alikes (1998) to a series of less dense, but no less savory, sight games for younger children. Using approximately 50-100 common objectsdoilies, dog biscuits, buttons, combs, snack food, cans, crayons, bits of this or thatfor each, she assembles 11 scenes, from a busy construction site to a tidy classroom, then invites children to deconstruct them. Captioned by couplets, closed with a complete key to materials, these pages take Walter Wick's photographs for the I Spy series a step further, to an imagination- expanding realm where a pencil or a breadstick can play any number of amazing roles. (Picture book. 5-7) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.