By Eric Hill
A mother dog named Sally has lost her puppy, so your child opens every flap in the house looking for him, and behind each one is some other animal who is very much not Spot.
Spot hasn't eaten his dinner, so his mom Sally goes looking for him. Is he behind the door? Your child lifts the flap and a bear says no. Inside the clock? A snake. Under the stairs, in the piano, in the wardrobe, under the bed, in the box — a monkey, a hippo, a lion, a tortoise, and every one of them says no, none of them the least bit bothered to be found in somebody's piano. Then the very last basket in the corner, and there he is. Sally has carried your child right past the answer for eight pages, and your child is the one who finally gets to open it.
At two and three, the best part of a book is getting to do something to it, and this one is nothing but doing. Every spread asks a question your child answers with their hands, and the answer is always some animal who has no business being there, so a surprise turns up every few seconds instead of only at the end. The words are tiny, a line a page, so a lot of children have the whole thing memorized within a week and start 'reading' it back to you. Eric Hill drew everything flat and bold and huge, which means there's never any hunting for what you're supposed to look at. It's been in print since 1980, and for many children it's the first book they think of as their own.