THE BANGING BOOK

Grossman (Cowboy Ed, 1993, etc.) employs a series of relentless, repetitive, and noisy rhymes to pound home the message that banging and building trumps banging and breaking every time. Heavy on alliteration and almost excessively onomatopoeic, the text is full of ``banging, bopping, smashing, clanging'' and ``pounding, . . . wacking, rapping, tapping.'' The rhyming text is eerily reminiscent of the simple moralistic purity of the Dick and Jane readers. The art is bold, cartoony in a bright 1950s palette with thick outlines, and evokes the toy-heaped interiors of suburban tract houses. The story features a community of four rowdy kids (a brown boy baby, a blond in a red skirt, a red head in purple capri pants, and a boy who looks like he'll grow up to become a painted wooden soldier); they happily destroy and then responsibly repair half the inventory of a good-sized Toys `R' Us. Who is the audience for this book? Children will like it, but the one who may enjoy it most may be the parent reading it aloud, tongue planted in cheek. (Picture book. 3-7)