SHEEP TAKE A HIKE

In their sixth appearance, Shaw's six insouciant sheep bumble their way through an expedition featuring the usual trials and mishaps of novice hikers (steep climbs, briars, arguing about the trail, a bog, getting lost). Each sheep is given a distinctive character in Apple's disarmingly soft color-pencil illustrations; and Shaw's deft wordplay should tickle young ears and propel the action (``Trees and bushes soon grow thicker./Where's the trail? Sheep bicker...Thorns dig. Prickers snag./Sheep zig. Sheep zag''). The thorns, after all, are some help: After a friendly moose helps ``Sheep climb out of the slime,'' they find tufts of their own wool marking their way home. Both preschoolers and newly independent readers will chortle at the antics of these charmingly silly and sensible sheep. (Picture book. 3-8)