A playful primer on graphic design, or simply lots of fun, Patricia Intriago’s picture book showcases the versatility of a simple shape. A yellow dot becomes something new when it changes color to red (“Stop dot”) or green (“Go dot”). It becomes an object in motion with the addition of one (“Slow dot”) or more (“Fast dot”) lines. Alter its size or shape a bit, add a touch of color, remove its shading, or let it multiply, and meanings continue to morph. Younger children will find delight in the suggested meanings in a book that could work for a preschool or early elementary storytime; older children may be fascinated or inspired by the artfulness that goes into these small changes with big results. (Ages 4–10)

Intriago plays with three levels of meaning in a concept book that uses a circle as its sole subject and character. On its most basic level, it's a book of opposites: stop/go; slow/fast; happy/sad. The bold graphics, mostly in black and white after the first few pages, show variations on the circle theme to highlight meaning. A green dot means go, a red dot, stop; a half-circle making a tentative entrance on the left side of the page illustrates slow, a quick exit on the right side of the page, fast; a half circle symbolizes a smile for happy, a tear-drop shape, sad. On a slightly more sophisticated level, it shows the activities and emotional arc of a child's day, beginning with the sunrise on the cover and ending with a full moon as a white circle against a black sky, surrounded by smaller white dots representing stars. In between there is the familiar running and bouncing around, being loud, being hungry, eating and spitting out yucky food, getting a scrape and the ever-important Band-Aid, and an afternoon outing in which we spy a Dalmatian ("got dots") and a zebra ("not dots"), both of which we see in photos against a stark white background. On a purely artistic level, it's all about perception, how we can see the same thing differently depending on context and composition. Intriago's accompanying text helps us share her vision, but it also serves to keep us a little off-center, as she offers a few predictable rhymes but avoids others. Just when you think you know what the circle is going to do, it goes and hides behind a square. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.