Lines have the ability to connect and define-something Naberhaus and Beck portray with grace in a board book that opens with a single vertical line and expands to encompass the entire solar system. It's an exercise in building: one line becomes four, and the resulting square turns into a building in a town crisscrossed by roads (more lines). Curved lines form circles, which become vehicles to fill those roads. There's a quiet poetry to Naberhaus's ultra-spare text ("Lines/ Squares/ Circles/ Go up/ Go Down/ Lines/ Squares/ Circles/ All around"), and Beck's bright illustrations play with form, perspective, and geometry as a town, community, and planet grow from the most basic of building blocks. Ages 2-4. Author's agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Toddler-PreS-A simple line becomes a square, squares, and a town, while another forms a circle, circles, and wheels. Together they become roads, towns, and a planet, as the view expands ever outward. Subtle and original.-Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Bit by bit a line transforms into greater shapes until it encompasses the solar system.A line becomes a group of lines that make a square. An arced line becomes a group of arced lines that make a circle. As the book progresses, the square becomes a square with many smaller squares inside, and a group of these squares-cum-houses becomes a town. The circle also becomes more than just a circle as it transforms into a vehicle, and other lines, squares, and circles become even more vehicles and people that go up and down and all around the town; then from town to town, round and round until they encompass the solar system. The text is spare with just one, two, or three words per page. The illustrations are geometric, stylized, and colorful, as befits the theme. Most of the faces formed by the circles are whiteliterally white, with the exception of a few green or blue ones. Readers on the younger end of the target audience are likely to key in on the idea of geometrical forms as building blocks; older ones can be engaged in the more abstract concept of interconnectedness.A deceptively simple book. (Board book. 2-4) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Simplicity's the key to this board book that deals solely in lines, squares, and circles. These basic shapes are the building blocks for scenes of increasingly broad scope. Things start small with a town constructed of square, windowed buildings on line-straight streets. Add circles to the mix, and vehicles putter along the roads, steered by round-faced stick people. Later pages zoom out for an aerial view of neighboring towns connected by streets, until a final spread pulls out further to reveal circular planets orbiting the sun. Saturated colors, primarily in blue and green, lend cheer to this creative concept lesson.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2017 Booklist