THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE AND MORE

Beginning with the familiar rhyme, Aylesworth adds a dozen or so similar verses, all equally silly: ``Hey gravy gravy!/The ram joined the navy,/The skunk sprayed French perfume;/The little hen laughed/To see such sport,/And the mop ran away with the broom.'' None has the mystery or simplicity of the original, but kids will enjoy chuckling over them and will want to make up their own—an activity that'll lure them into examining the verse's form and logic. Hull's imaginative illustrations (his first) join ebulliently in the fun; in a decorative, flat style, similar to stencils, they set the ridiculous situations among enough zany extra characters so that the pictures also work as puzzles. Good fun. (Picture book. 3-7)