In front of my house by Marianne Dubuc

Simple, colorful drawings expand a child's imagination in sequential form.

Doesn't that make you want to read this book? No? How about this?

An imaginative journey from the comforts of home, through hysterical silliness and back to the reassuring warmth of a child's house.

This is a simple but lovely little book. It's sized a little differently than most picturebooks, being about six inches square and has about twice as many pages as the average picturebook. But it's still a great read-aloud selection. Each page has one item - a house, a room, a princess, a dragon, a planet, etc. There are two lines of text; one naming the item, the second introducing the next page. So, you see "a book of fairy tales" and under the illustration of the book, the text reads "In the book of fairy tales..."

You'll have to turn the page to find out what's in there! Some of the items are easy to guess, like a forest around a hunter or a rocket ship in outer space. Others aren't so easy. What's under the bed? What's behind the pirate? What's behind the ducklings?

We're very fond of guessing books in my library, especially during school visits (I had kids rolling on the floor and screaming when we debuted Mac Barnett's Guess Again!). I can see a wide variety of uses for this story, from a simple read-aloud to toddlers and preschoolers, interactive guessing game with 1st and 2nd graders, writing prompts for elementary-age children, or a game for long drives in the car!

Verdict: Recommended for a wide variety of ages and uses.

ISBN: 9781554536412; Published September 2010 by Kids Can Press; Review copy provided by the publisher through Raab Associates.