TANGLE TOWN

The glass door says ``pull,'' but the mayor is pushing, and he's getting blisters. This he tells to a passing policeman who offers help: ``Blisters . . . plenty of them.'' But the cop hears wrong, and he shouts, ``We need blasters! Twenty of them,'' to the gathering crowd. The crowd hears ``disaster,'' and mass panic ensues. So it goes in Tangle Town. Into the hubbub strolls Roxy Toppler, a farm girl looking for her wayward cow. ``What's going on?'' she asks, and the answers come fast. `` `The mayor!'—`The mayor got blistered!'—`Plastered!'—`Blasted to bits by twenty twisters!'—`Big, big disaster!' '' Swinging into action, Roxy deploys her ``barnyard instincts'' to herd the crazed mob, attain a semblance of order (defined in Tangle Town as anything other than total chaos), and find her cow. Cyrus's first book creates good slaphappy wordplay—the text can be read aloud in either a bark or a lilt—and his illustrations aptly convey both the frantic behavior of the crowd and the bird's nest of streets, overpasses, and buildings that make up this twisted city. (Picture book. 4-8)