Busy Having Fun

“Where in the hickory stick is Grandma?” Young Woolie doesn’t know; all he knows is that it’s not his turn to go looking for her. And so, one by one, his siblings--Mack, Oleanna and Monroe--are sent instead. And, one by one, they find her too busy sliding down haystacks or playing nine-card stump to be bothered to come home . . . until, at last, it’s Woolie’s turn to go in search of his gritty Granny. I won’t give away the ending but it has something enticing to do with a banjo band and the “Chickadilla Song.” In IT’S NOT MY TURN TO LOOK FOR GRANDMA! (Knopf: $15; ages 4 to 8) Los Angeles author April Halprin Wayland has crafted a hilarious story full of memorable characters and, thanks to her training as a poet, even more memorable turns of idiomatic phrase (“Noon was sizzling like an egg in a cast-iron pan”). Meanwhile the great New Yorker cartoonist George Booth has created wackily apposite pictures filled with eccentric human and animal characters, all of whom are caught in laugh-out-loud situations and poses.

Another gifted L.A. author, Barbara Bottner, also marries wit and melody in HURRICANE MUSIC (Putnam’s: $15.95; ages 4 to 8). It’s love at first sight when Aunt Margaret finds an old clarinet in the basement. “Merciful melodies,” she cries, “this is for me!” Uncle Seymour isn’t so sure but he faithfully tags along as his tune-besotted wife travels around the countryside to study “the sounds of life,” until nature sounds a nasty note when Hurricane Gladys blows the horn away. “Holy Falooza!” Could this be the end of the song? Illustrator Paul Yalowitz’s softly colored pictures are more subdued than Booth’s pen-and-ink/watercolor cutouts but his humorously stylized figures are guaranteed smile-inducers.

A reviewer seldom encounters a soul mate in a picture book but I’ve found mine in Elizabeth Brown, the passionately book-loving protagonist of Sarah Stewart’s THE LIBRARY (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $15; all ages) . “When volumes climbed the parlor walls / And blocked the big front door,” Elizabeth has to face the awful fact “she could not have one more.” What she does next adds suspense and a sweetly satisfying conclusion to Stewart’s sprightly, rhyming story while the author’s husband--illustrator David Small--contributes slyly humorous, full-page watercolor pictures, each framed in an elegant, black-line border.

“The backseat of a car is no place for a buckaroo who’s ready for adventure,” L.A. author/photographer Edward Valfre writes in BACKSEAT BUCKAROO (Thomasson-Grant: $14.95; ages 5 and up). With nothing to do but look out the window of the family car, Valfre’s Everybuckaroo--his face is tantalizingly hidden by the brim of his cowboy hat--turns to his imagination, translating roadside scenes of the American West into exotically imagined lands full of adventure. The deadpan, ironic tone of the slender story is brilliantly captured and expanded by the offbeat and atmospheric photographs that illustrate the text. It’s obvious that the pictures preceded the creation of the story, but that’s OK, since their very discontinuity matches the observed moments that string the story together. Valfre’s haunting images are well served by the beautiful design and production of this intriguing book.