This Is the Farmer

Set in generously sized type, a succinct text shapes a sequence of events into a slice of farm life. Tafuri's ( Have You Seen My Duckling? ) large-scale, elegant illustrations dominate the double-page spreads, with figures often overflowing the pictures' colored borders. The story starts out with the farmer, ``who kisses his wife / who pats the dog / that scratches a flea / that lands on a cat'' and so on, until the conclusion, in which the farmer milks the cow and sends a squirt of milk into the waiting cat's mouth. Rendered in watercolor and ink, the artwork is pleasingly detailed: geese waddle through the barnyard, three kittens examine a ladybug and a brown mouse can be found scampering or hiding on all but the first three spreads. Ages 2-up. (May)