Holey Moley

K-Gr 2—A new picture book by Ehlert is always a cause for celebration. The light plot, told in rhyme, centers on a mole finding good things to eat in a garden—and like Ehlert's Feathers for Lunch (HMH, 1990), Scraps (S. & S., 2014), and others, the star of the show is the collage illustration. The eponymous mole, plus plants (with extensive root systems), butterflies, and other inhabitants of the garden, are illustrated entirely with cut-paper shapes, some in bright solid colors and some in multihued, textured pieces. Bold blue, orange, and purple backgrounds in the top sections of most pages provide sharp contrast with the brown and black soil underneath. Words are printed in white against these solid color backgrounds, in Ehlert's characteristic large, easy-to-read serif font, sometimes in straight lines and sometimes following curves in the illustrations. Fans of Ehlert's work will recognize these features, but there's more for observant readers to discover here: worms crawling among the dirt form letters that collectively spell the phrase "worms are swell." A physical hole in the cover adds tactile interest. The final pages feature a labeled map of the mole's underground tunnels and an illustrated list of small, labeled pictures of creatures seen earlier in the book.