"Animal Masquerade," by Marianne Dubuc, and More It was a day for a parent to remember when the not-quite-2-year-old daughter of the Russian children's poet Kornei Chukovsky toddled up to her father and, looking "mischievous and embarrassed at the same time, as if she were up to some intrigue," blurted out, "Daddy, "oggie - meow!" Chukovsky's initial response was to correct the little girl, but he caught himself and joined in the game, having grasped that in telling her first joke, his daughter had arrived at a major milestone: the discovery that words were as much her playthings as the dolls and building blocks called toys. Written and illustrated by Marianne Dubuc Kids Can Press. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 3 to 7) Written and illustrated by Il Sung Na 32 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $15.99. Picture book; ages 2 to 5 By Eric Pinder Illustrated by Marc Brown 40 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $16.99. Picture book; ages 2 to 6 Such toddler-like forays into abstract thought set up the preschooler's more established craving for make-believe: stories about talking animals and other imaginary beings, shape-shifting let's-pretend games, dress-up. For children advancing through this expansive, fluid time, the sparklingly droll and imaginative drawings of "Animal Masquerade" are made to measure. Marianne Dubuc, a French Canadian artist, has created a delightful cavalcade of birds and beasts, nattily attired as they prepare for a costume party. Nearly all have opted to go as a different animal, and much of the heat generated by these sly, elegant pencil drawings comes from seeing the natural order so freely scrambled. In an effort to pass himself off as a mouse, the zebra dons a cone-shaped mask with whiskers and a curlicue tail. The mouse, meanwhile, perches on stilts for a look at life as a flamingo. When it comes to dreams of living large, it's the ladybug, however, who takes the prize, suiting up as a hippopotamus - albeit a hilariously puny one. Only the platypus chooses not to dress up - because, as the narrator notes deadpan, "he looks like he's already in disguise." The hen, alas, doesn't wear a costume either: "She didn't understand a thing," the narrator reports, perhaps holding back a crocodile tear. She isn't very smart.  Others dress as nursery tale animals, including the elegant swan and her two cygnets, who deftly conceal beaks under pretend snouts in order to become the Three Little Pigs without looking too piggish. The only human in the procession - another nursery tale character, Little Red Riding Hood - has made the most foolish costume selection of all. Clueless as ever, she has disguised herself as a chocolate cake, prompting the narrator to pipe up with alarm: "The bear has quite a sweet tooth. Be careful, Little Red Riding Hood! Margaret Wise Brown, the author of "Goodnight Moon" and other classics, and Eric Carle, creator of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," are the masters of the non-narrative picture book. Such read-alouds are usually centered on a simple, repetitive, gamelike structure that invites young children to chime in collaboratively. Books like theirs, including this one, give the young a springboard for making up their own characters and stories, no instructions necessary. Dubuc may well inspire readers to reach for their crayon boxes. But as her animal friends remind us: to each his own. For some it will be quite enough to watch this adroit artist turn a lion into an elephant and an elephant into a parrot. In "Hide and Seek," the Korean illustrator Il Sung Na ("A Book of Sleep," "Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit") teases out the narrative possibilities in the clever idea that a game long favored by the young and restless at recess is also the chameleon's game in nature. While a cuddly elephant counts out loud from 1 to 10, his equally adorable wildland friends (a giraffe, a rhino and others) scramble for cover. But it's the chameleon - the single poker-face member of the group ­ - we're meant to keep tabs on, the artist having concealed the changeable fellow in every scene. Readers, of course, get to play hide-and-seek too. In a few illustrations - each a digitally prepared mix of line drawing and richly hued and textured collage - Na has not made it easy, though we're not quite in "Where's Waldo?" territory either. The elephant's count is a stress-free chance for younger preschoolers to brush up on their numbers, while the images" wildly shifting perspectives make a trip through these pages a kind of visual roller-coaster ride. Collage, including painted and textured cut-paper elements and snippets of photographs, is also the medium used by Marc Brown, of Arthur the Aardvark fame, for "If All the Animals Came Inside," a collaboration with Eric Pinder. Brown's first venture into collage has a carload of enthusiasm behind it, along with this seasoned artist's knack for communicating directly with children via humor. The story, told in nicely turned, high-energy verse, is a child's fantasy of what might happen if a horde of animals were to move in. It's a farcical, made-for-slapstick premise with distant echoes of well-known stories as different as the Yiddish folk tale "It Could Always Be Worse" and Dr. Seuss" "Cat in the Hat." Pinder's narrator, a frisky 6- or 7-year-old, starts out by imagining that he and his siblings like the new setup much more than their parents do. For the children, this is home as a never-ending day at a theme park, with no end of novel, raucous adventures. Then, just as reasonably, the boy imagines having had his fill, and wanting to have his old young life back. Childhood, after all, isn't entirely about being imaginative. Doggies sometimes do actually go woof. Leonard S. Marcus is the editor of "The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth" and the forthcoming "Show Me a Story! Why Picture Books Matter.