ANIMAL FARE

In the tradition of Lear, Carroll, and Seuss, pure nonsense: 16 deftly fashioned rhymes about newly imagined animals. "The wherewolf lives in Transylvania,/The whenwolf lives in Ruritania,/The whowolf lives in Pennsylvania....And each one drives men quite insania/With his whild and whorrible song." Though not all equally inventive ("The Sprinkler Spaniel," though neatly scanned, is pretty obvious), the wit is sustained with rare success; there's a sprightly "Telephant" updating Laura E. Richards's "Eletelephony" as well as "a lumpy cuss" of a "Camelephant" ("He cannot cross a desert waste,/He cannot cross the jungle./It's clear that evolution has,/In his case, made a bungle"). As she did for Yolen's Raining Cats and Dogs (1993), Street provides pen-and-watercolor spreads in bright, airy colors; her raffish visualizations of such useful concoctions as the "Giraft" ("periscope necks fore and aft") and the "Hippopotanoose" are a hoot. (Poetry/Picture book. 4-8)