COWBOYS

Still experimenting within his bold, trademark style, Rounds achieves surprising subtlety in these illustrations for a quiet, informative text describing what real cowboys do on a typical day (``A cowboy's first chore after breakfast is to catch and saddle a horse—but sometimes that's easier said than done!''). Drawing his slim (even emaciated) figures with a dry brush that softens and sometimes feathers the heavy line he used in recent books like Old MacDonald... (1989), he smudges in gently modulated earth tones brightened with splashes of sharper color—the whole vividly evoking the bony cowboys' arid landscape, their swift, purposeful horses, the stolid cattle's lugubrious stance. The all-capital text has been hand-lettered in a gracefully informal approximation of a more formal inline style, blending beautifully with the art. Fifty-five years after his first fine book (Ol' Paul, still in print), this old cowboy (Rounds himself) is going stronger than ever. (Picture book. 4-8)