THE LITTLE RED HEN

Everymother has her day, and the freeloading cat, dog and mouse their comeuppance, in fresh, expressive pictures that do full justice to the enduring tale. Galdone's cat, elegantly luxuriating on a broken-down Victorian purple couch, his dog smugly sacked out on a hammock, and his mufflered, curled up mouse rocking by the fire are lazy each in his/her own way, just as each of their noses rises in its own way to the smell of the fresh baked cake. The industrious hen provides the action, and it's all played out in a minutely realized dilapidated old farmhouse and a sunny yard that fairly leaps with wheat and weeds and flowers.