HARK!

With the holiday season bringing its usual mountains of mail, squads of cloud-dwelling aardvarks in snappy blue uniforms swoop down on stubby golden wings to give busy postal workers an assist in this knee-slapper from the author of Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep (2000). In festively hued watercolor scenes, the aardvarks fly cheerfully from desert to bayou to space station, picking up and delivering in all weathers (or lack thereof), then, when their work is done, returning to their billowy home to check out the gifts and cookies. Sloat models the rhymed text after a certain familiar hymn, even recapitulating the new lyrics with a musical arrangement at the end—“Angels wind through jungle trees, / Gather mail from underseas, / Come in answer to the prayers, / Of the mailmen climbing stairs. / Hark! The aardvark angels bless / Mail without a street address.” There seems no end to the making of Christmas stories, but this one will stick with readers, if only for its outstandingly daffy premise. (Picture book. 6-8)