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Miles (Mrs. McFig and the Very Big Wig) and newcomer Hoopes celebrate the power of books to entertain, transport, and inspire. "This is a book," Miles begins. "Black words on white paper. No buttons. No bonus levels." (He clearly knows his competition.) The opening pages are indeed simply black type on white backgrounds, but the words grows larger as Miles encourages readers to look "closer, and closer, and closer" until the letters erupt into colorful worlds of undersea animals, rocket ships, and distant mountaintops. A boy, first seen crawling from behind one of the letters, enters a world of floating islands, dirigibles, and hot-air balloons, before going on to receive a key from a witch, dance with fairy-tale creatures, and use the key to unlock a door, out of which pour books and words representing knowledge and truth. The writing can be a bit overblown ("Where imagination scrapes the skies of opportunity, the forests of what-could-be stretch beyond the horizon"), but Hoopes's intricately detailed illustrations conjure expansive yet cozy imaginary landscapes that readily evoke the possibilities that await within books. Ages 3-5. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This book quietly praises reading as a path to imaginative adventures while also taking several gentle swipes at high-tech gadgetry. "And when your time comes to a close and the other world begins to call, don't worry." No, this close-to-the-final-page sentence does not refer to death but to leaving one's book life for what some call "real life." The beginning of the book makes it clear that a book is "quiet" and "ordinary""No buttons. No bonus levels"until "you learn to look closer." Thoughtful, poetic phrases are well-matched by mixed-media artwork that includes scraps of typed words in French and English, some of which are authors' names. A black-haired Caucasian child in a red-and-white-striped shirt moves through a nonthreatening, fantastical world where "imagination scrapes the skies of opportunity, / the forests of what-could-be stretch beyond the horizon, // and the friends of fact and fiction make believe all night long under the milky stars of possibility." Pastel skies lead to firefly-bedecked nights, adding a bedtime story's allure. If this book is published as an e-book or app, some of its appeal will give way to irony. Its humor lies in such digs as, "It will never be sick, because viruses can't catch it. // It will never go dark, because it doesn't need batteries." One of the prettiest paeans to the codex in recent memory. (Picture book. 3-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.