CLORINDA TAKES FLIGHT

Kinerk and Kellogg pair up for another adventure featuring Clorinda, the cow with distinctly bigger-than-bovine aspirations. With her friends, Len the farmhand and Hop the pig, helping mightily, Clorinda works to achieve her new dream—to fly. Kinerk’s verse scans nicely and offers young readers a rollicking account of the friends’ mechanical mishaps and impressive stick-to-itiveness. Kellogg’s exuberant paintings depict the trio’s ups and downs with his always welcome, signature blend of comic detail and expansive perspective, as Clorinda and Pig sail all the way to London in a hand-built hot-air balloon. Feted by the Queen herself and supplied with some royal tea for left-behind Len, their return trip ends with the threesome talking “of adventures, of friendship, and dreams” under a luminous moon. Hopefully, we’ve not seen the last of them, nor of Kinerk and Kellogg’s agreeable collaboration. High-flying fun. (Picture book. 4-8)