HIP CAT

``Living all alone in a riverside shack:/Oobie-do the Sax Man Scat Man,/the cool cat man'' takes his sax to the city and wails ``his song of longing, his song of joy,/his song of loneliness and looniness'' to great applause but so little pay that he's reduced to working at the Doggie Diner. London recounts the black cat's adventures and eventual success as ``a jazz magician...and a poet of the blues'' in rhythmic rap, the words sometimes looping and swirling through Hubbard's stylish art. Her vibrant colors and expressive figures are the strongest feature of a book that will appeal to admirers of Raschka's Charlie Parker Played Bebop (1992), though this is neither as witty nor as original. (Picture book. 4-9)