The Cow Is Mooing Anyhow: A Scrambled Alphabet Book to Be Read at Breakfast

Billing itself somewhat coyly as a ``scrambled alphabet book to be read at breakfast,'' this ABC book is not so easy to figure out. In each spread--the same scene throughout--a girl is eating breakfast and an animal enters, accompanied by a verse (``the Dragonfly, the dragonfly / sprinkles salt as she flies by''; ``the Monkey, the monkey / dabs my egg with chutney''). The initial letters are in random order, but the real difficulty here lies in figuring out which animal is which, as the room fills up with a chaotic assortment of animals engaged in various rhyming activities. There is much to look at, though, and Zimmer's ( The Sky is Full of Song ; In a Dark, Dark Room & Other Scary Stories ) cartoony illustrations are full of vitality. Ages 4-9. (Mar.)