THE RICKETY BARN SHOW

A pleasingly silly bauble of a story, somewhat akin to Old MacDonald in picture-book format. At the quiet old Rickety Barn, Jasper the cat has a brainstorm: “I’ll put on a show!” He will sing a song. When Sniggle the pig hears Jasper tuning his tonsils, he asks what’s up. Jasper tells him about the show, and Sniggle says he wants in. “Well, what can you do?” asks Jasper. Why, accompany Jasper as a one-pig band. And so it goes, from Sniggle to Suzie the hen to the old carthorse to all the barnyard animals. When showtime nears, they assemble in the old barn and await the crowds. Then, when nobody shows, they are momentarily disappointed until Sniggle points out that the potential audience is all in the show. “There was only one thing to do. ‘The show must go on!’ cried Jasper. And it did.” A satisfyingly goofy tale, with its repetitions and nutty predictability, made all the better by Chapman’s finely tuned, if cockamamie, pastels. The end paper even tells young readers how they might go about staging their own Rickety Barn show. Start practicing your audience skills and watch out for those death-defying sheep. (Picture book. 3-6)