Dogs, Dogs, Dogs! - Hardcover

Newman's lolling, rhyming words follow an urban pack through a day's adventures--from "a pickup game of hoops" to "climbing up and down a row of stoops." But the blue ribbon goes to Oller, for her personality sketches in watercolor that catch scores of varied canines in all their glorious dogness: a hilarious toothy dachshund attempts to gorge himself to proverbial dog heaven on a "big, delicious bone"; a bow-bedecked poodle pants approvingly at a hair stylist as the pack struts through a salon; a lively procession of dog-shaped blurs hurls itself into a lake for laps (before Newman finishes off the rhyme with "dogs taking naps").

Sure, kids can practice their counting as the band of dogs grows one by one to 10 (and then back again), but any education here will be incidental at best--or at least secondary to giggling and doggy impersonations. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes