THE COW WHO WOULDN'T COME DOWN

Poor Miss Rosemary! Gertrude, her cow, has a mind of her own, and now she's literally up in the air, where neither threats, promises, lures, nor lassoes ensnare her. Solution: a sturdy-looking replacement—stitched together, stuffed, shod with roller skates, and dubbed ``Matilda''—so provokes Gertrude's jealousy that she comes ``down like a rocket..land[s] squarely on Matilda and mashe[s] her flat.'' Johnson, ``a well-known painter from Kentucky's Appalachian coalfields,'' tells his comical tall tale with a pleasantly brisk lilt and sets it firmly in mountain farm country, outlining the vagrant cow and her vigorous, matronly mistress in authoritative black, dappling the landscape in luminous color, and deftly varying full-page scenes with spreads and vignettes. A delightful and well-polished first performance. (Picture book. 4-8)