As Frazier (Stanley Mows the Lawn) points out all the places we find dots, he also demonstrates the ways in which they appeal to our five senses. "Some dots are big," he begins, as the cover character, now appearing in a golden hue and holding a blue stick, beats on a giant drum that spills across the gutter. On the next page, "Some dots are small," and a ladybug sits on the green-tinted fellow's nose. "Some dots float" (balloons) "and some dots fall" (oranges). The author-artist addresses taste sensations with ice cream ("dots for licking") and scents with a field of flowers ("dots that smell sweet"). One standout contrast occurs over two spreads, beginning with "Some dots are heavy," picturing the hero once again in golden hues, battling a giant barbell that stretches across two pages, and ending with "some dots are light," as the hero (now pink) blows light blue bubbles from the lower right corner that float to the upper left corner. And one of the wittiest spreads depicts the character, his car and a traffic light all in gold, with the green light at the intersection: "There are dots for going."
With a simple adjustment of the hero's pupil size or its position within the whites of his eyes, Frazier can change the fellow's temperament. The same applies to the color values he assigns to the composition. Frazier moves from "some dots are colorful," in which the hero and the gumball machine appear in a cherry red, and we watch him pop a yellow gumball into his mouth. Then, with the turn of a page, Frazier creates a planetarium on the spread--"and some dots are bright"--and we stare with the hero at a night sky through a cornflower-blue telescope. The hero's white gloved hand and his eye create a through line to the stars, and Frazier evokes a mood of quiet contemplation. A final spread revisits all of the images from the previous pages. This will send youngsters off on a dot odyssey of their own, both in the spirit of going on a scavenger hunt and also as artists awakened to the abundance of shapes in the world around them.--Jennifer M. Brown