HEAT WAVE

Ketteman (Bubba, the Cowboy Prince, p. 1646, etc.) repeats herself in this pack of lies fashioned into a Kansas-style tall tale. Just as Beanie was not up to the job (``too young'') in the author's 1993 tale, The Year of No More Corn, the narrator in this story has been told by her brother that girls can't be farmers. Once again there's a heat wave, once again the corn pops off the stalk. In the other book, chickens laid hard-boiled eggs; in this one the cows jump around on the hot ground so much that their milk turns to butter. That's not the end of the tall tales, which come to a close only after the narrator thinks to plant iceberg lettuce to cool the place down. Goto's eye-popping, thermometer-busting illustrations are perfectly matched to the story's exaggerated dimensions; weird angles and brash colors give the fields and farm a parched look ideal for the antics in the foreground—even though those antics are too familiar. (Picture book. 5-8)