TWIST WITH A BURGER, JITTER WITH A BUG

Lowery (Laurie Tells, 1994, etc.) folds a drumbeat into her book about all kinds of high-stepping. The seven huffing-and- puffing lines featuring dance words all conform to the same rhythmic pattern: ``Boogie in the bathtub,/hula-hula dance,/Rumba if you wanna in your underpants.'' This patternin which the first line in the rhyme is broken into two short phrases, while the second line is kept longis the beloved form of rap. These rhymes, packed with spondees, demand a hearing out loud, with the emphasis on ``loud.'' Last seen in Christine Loomis's One Cow Coughs (1994), Dypold's illustrationsbright and colorful cut-paper collages on a white backgroundare daringly decentered in compositions that capture gestures rather than details and never fall out of step with the rhymes. Others have filled the pages with dance verbs and demonstrations; this particular treatment is modern and original. (Picture book. 4-7)