As noted in my comment I can close this question as I've found a good solution. As I wanted both "skip ahead" and "skip back" as well as "jump to page", I used a solution that involved specifying the top level View Controller as a delegate to content view controller, keeping track of the current page, and then passing the clicks on contentViewController back up to the implementation of the top level controller (as delegate) to move to the new page(s).
I have posted the source code for this solution as part of the "A-B-C Picture Book" source code. This app is in the app store; see https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-b-c-picture-book/id578864421?ls=1&mt=8.