This Is a Ball by Beck Stanton (review)

What seems like simple concept book identification ("This is a ball. . . . This is a dog") becomes a playful game between reader-aloud and audience in this Australian import, since each text identification is absurdly paired with something that's very definitely not what's suggested (the "ball" is a cube; the "dog" is an elephant). The comic text leaves space for the inevitable pushback from the knowing audience but then makes the hapless adult double down ("Nah, it's a dog for sure"). The misidentified elements then begin to accumulate to make a story about a monster and a princess with her pet dog at the beach, none of which is, according to the illustrations, what's really going on. While some of the wrongheadedness could be a little more tightly structured, it's a solidly funny concept, and the metacommentary of the adult ("Are your eyes working properly? We might need to take your temperature") is ripe for dramatic and ridiculous overreading. The art itself is almost perfunctory in its minimalism, with each element a tidy digital figure with only a color or two against the white background; it's always on the recto, facing a brightly colored page (palette keyed to the illustration) with the text in white. Kids will have a ball with This Is a Ball.