GRIM AND GHOSTLY GOINGS-ON

Typical, fairly gross juvenile-style humor—rival monster mothers boasting (``Mine smells like/an old sardine.''/''Mine's the weirdest/thing you've seen''), the nasty habits of rubber bands (``They creep and ooze and slither...They crawl up on your blanket/and swarm all over you./Then they suck your blood out...''), and the like. None of it is nearly as imaginative or funny as Heide's classic The Shrinking of Treehorn (1971), or, for that matter, the children's own inventions as reported by Alvin Schwartz or the Opies. Still, the topic is an enduring favorite; the versifying is skillful; and Chess provides amusingly wicked, not too gruesome visualizations in her usual pungent style. (Poetry/Picture book. 5-9)