School Library Journal
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Toddler-PreS—Inviting text and winsome cardboard collage illustrations come together in an appealing food-themed guessing game. Readers are presented with a set of deconstructed shapes and invited to predict the food they will form once the page is turned. Each item (strawberry, cupcake, lettuce, hamburger, turkey, pizza) once put together is promptly carried away by ants, who at the end of the book must break their snacks back down into individual shapes, carry them piece by piece through the narrow mouth of their anthill, and reassemble them underground to create a wacky feast of avant-garde food piles. Children will relish the enterprising ant characters and the winning interactive component. VERDICT This generous graphic concept book will benefit all collections.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A board-book feast of colors, shapes, counting, and food. Uncluttered pages feature little to no background detail in the appealing art, which presents simple, colorful shapes. On the first spread, there are three shapes, and accompanying spare, sans-serif type prompts, “Time to eat! 3 shapes get together to make….” The page turn reveals the three shapes assembled to form “a strawberry!” On the facing page of this reveal, an ant (unmentioned by the text) carries the strawberry on its back, with implied movement to the right and toward the next page turn. The next spread presents four shapes, which, when put together, create a cupcake, and subsequent spreads continue to increase the number of shapes and the complexity of the depicted foods. With each reveal, more ants arrive to march off with lettuce leaves, a cheeseburger, a roast turkey, and a pizza slice, in turn. The climactic spread presents a dilemma: The foods won’t fit down the hole of the anthill. The clever ants have a solution, however, and they disassemble the foods again into smaller shapes, inviting readers to play an amusing I Spy game to identify which pieces go to which foods. The resulting “feast” on the last page offers a final laugh when the ants reassemble the shapes to silly results. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Playful fare for toddlers. (Board book. 0-3) Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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As an ant feast is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in this foodie exploration of quantity and design, Ordóñez’s flatly colored, digitally assembled illustrations demonstrate the way shapes come together to make images. Establishing the concept, the first recto presents three atypical shapes; a page turn later, these components are combined into a strawberry. Accompanying interrogative text encourages interactivity as an increasing number of pieces, building up to eight, create more elaborate edibles (“What do 4 shapes make?// A cupcake!”). On each completing spread’s recto page, hungry ants escort the comestibles off-page, eventually joining up in a march toward their anthill, where a small entrance necessitates taking everything back apart. The counting involves some confusing quirks—three cupcake sprinkles are counted as one item, and some of the pizza toppings multiply when appearing on a slice—but the final smorgasbord nevertheless amuses with a vision of remixed dishes. Ages 1–3. (Nov.)