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Children's Literature
Author and mind-bender David Carter has invented a new book form. The publisher, Little Simon, calls it a guessing-game storybook, but it is much, much more than that. Every left, or verso, page is white and every other right, or recto, page is also white. The alternating recto pages are in color. The top two-thirds of each color page is red. The bottoms are black with intriguing shadow-like images that suggest photographic negatives. As the pages are turned a yellow sun rises in the red sky. So much for the simple part. The name of the book, Woof! Woof, is printed on a bone-shaped piece of white paper fixed onto the title page, introducing the prestidigitation that follows. Page one shows only a large question mark. Page two has eight small elongated triangles punched out, four at the top of the page with red backing and four below backed by black from the page underneath. Turn the page and the left side reads "legs." On the right page the cut-out pieces appear to be pasted onto the colored page in a way that suggests they might become eight legs for two dogs. The book proceeds forward in the same manner, with bodies, tails, heads, ears, and mouths shaped from triangles cut from the white pages. When the page turns, the white cut-out triangles are appropriately placed on the colored pages that follow. The white pages with the cut-out triangles never show a trace of where the white cut-out pieces will appear on the following page, and only red, black, and bits of yellow are ever seen beneath the cut outs. What the last and most surprising set of cut-out triangles in the book become I will leave to your imagination. This is a knock out! 2006, Little Simon/Simon & Schuster, Ages 4up.—Eleanor Heldrich
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