CLEAN HOUSE

Tess is glad that Kate, ``the cousin she'd liked best last year at the big family picnic,'' is coming for a visit, but her mother, remembering Aunt Alice's spotless house, rushes to exile the family pets and remove all of their cheerful, feel-good clutter. The antiseptic result pleases no one, but the weekend is saved when the comfortable mess is happily restored; all the action is jovially captured in Abolafia's antic line drawings. While constructed on the obvious joke of cleaning for the relatives, this chapter book is an affectionate, good-natured romp with a homey message and plenty of rowdy fun. Not content with chewed shoes, skidding rugs, and overturned furniture, Haas (Mowing, 1994, etc.) turns a dog, a cat, a string toy, and a vacuum cleaner into an inspired moment of comic lunacy. (Fiction. 6-9)