DARK CLOUD STRONG BREEZE

``Dark cloud strong breeze/Inside the car Daddy's locked his keys,'' begins this fanciful story of a mishap that balloons into an eventful sequence. The locksmith will help if he has a guard for his shop; a stray dog will guard it in exchange for shelter; a grocer needs a cat to catch mice; etc. (It's not clear until later that the grocer will provide boxes for the dog's shelter.) The car is finally unlocked and the rains fall; but unfortunately, the idea hasn't been developed with either Patron's or Catalanotto's usual skill. The mixture of fantasy and ordinary neighborhood reality is uneasy; onomatopoeic words like ``smasha-me smit'' or ``swisha-me swhy'' seem contrived; and though Catalanotto's watercolors—color insets of the action superimposed on the larger street scene in grisaille—are nicely observed in detail, they are also cluttered and confusing. All in all, coming from an author and an illustrator with a number of fine books to their separate credit, a disappointment. (Picture book. 4-8)