A Pizza the Size of the Sun

Poetry's bad boys are back again, teaming up to take another swipe at stuffiness. Prelutsky's predilection for playfulness percolates throughout this collection of slyly subversive rhymes, and he couldn't ask for a better partner in crime than Stevenson, whose droll, minimalist sketches so enlivened the duo's previous escapades (The New Kid on the Block; Something BIG Has Been Here). Once again Prelutsky demonstrates a robust appreciation of the absurd--and an uncanny knack for turning every possible subject on its head. Here his verse ranges from the short and sweet (""My mother makes me chicken,/ her chicken makes me cough./ I wish that when she made it,/ she took the feathers off"") to poems of Jabberwockian silliness (the entry that begins "" `I'm ceiling fad!' a money boned./ `Alas!' a carrot pride"" is just one example). The pages are peppered with kinetic black-and-white drawings; like Thurber, Stevenson wrings a wealth of humor and emotion out of a few dashes of ink. If a laugh is what's needed, just hand over the keys and let these two drive. Ages 5-up. (Sept.)