One Lonely Seahorse
Fruits and vegetables speak louder than words, and Saxton  Freymann and Joost Elffers (Play with Your Food,How Are You  Peeling?) sure know how to tell a tale with produce. Bea--a  lonely sea horse made out of Chioggia beets--is the star of this  extraordinary counting book. (We know she's made of beets because the  endpapers identify all the produce used in the lovely underwater  seascapes--from cantaloupes to enoki mushrooms.) We know Bea is  lonely, too, because sea horses just don't get any lonelier than  this:Beneath the ocean, deep and wide,One lonely, drifting sea horse cried,"In all the cold and salty seaI'm all alone--there's only me."Fortunately, other sea creatures are eager to befriend her--two small  mushroom crabs, three horned melon puffer fish, four ginger lobsters  (we never knew fresh ginger looked exactly like lobsters), five  pineapple turtles, six banana dolphins, seven cranberry-bean eels,  eight banana-peel octopi, nine Asian eggplant mackerel, and ten  bell-pepper angelfish. By the end of the book, Bea is surrounded by  her colorful new friends in a glorious undersea cornucopia: "'You are  my friends,' said Bea, 'that's true, / And I can always count on you!'"  We can honestly say there is not a child or adult alive who could  resist the charms of this visually breathtaking book, carefully  composed and crisply photographed. Chefs, marine biologists, kids,  rejoice!One Lonely Sea Horseis a fabulous tribute to food,  figures, photography, and friendship. (Toddler to adult)--Karin Snelson