Do Not Open This Book!    

Please, Open This Book! (Adam Lehrhaupt, author; Matthew Forsythe, illustrator. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013 and 2015) 

Talk about nothing but fun. Do Not Open This Book!, the first of the series, warns not to keep turning the page. The reader finds out why when they let the monkeys out. Then the toucans. Then the alligator. There is nothing to do but trap the wild beasts by closing the book on them. None other than a banana is used as bait. Book two, Please, Open This Book!, is set in blackness of a closed book, brilliantly contrasting the white background of book one. The reader (aka ‘book closer’) from the first book is made to feel guilty by drawings of terrified and injured animals. But the shame really sets in when the “perfectly good banana” that was destroyed by the book-closing incident is shown. A ‘wanted’ sign depicting the ‘book closer’ gave my eight year-old the idea to read these with her cousin and tape a photo of said cousin over the ‘wanted’ sign. The fun continued. These picture books are some of the most entertaining that I have read; try to have them both on hand at the same time–a better pairing is tough to come by.