THE WALLOPING WINDOW-BLIND

LaMarche (illustrator of Melmed's Rainbabies, 1992) resets a familiar nonsense rhyme as the oceangoing adventures of a gang of cheery children. Bothered less by huge seas and roaring gales than by their diet (``a number of tons of hot-cross buns/Chopped up with sugar and glue,'' or later, once they've been cast ashore on the Gullaby Isles, fed ``From dawn to dark, on rubagub bark''), they cavort about their odd vessel or splash happily in a ``Peppermint Sea.'' Though the zany text has been considerably emended—e.g., the cook is no longer ``Dutch'' and the rescue ship at the end is not pirated—the realism of LaMarche's figures contrasts comically with their antics. An energetic alternative to Ted Rand's edition (1992). (Picture book. 5-8)