Oh, Tucker!

Bursting onto the scene like a force of nature, Tucker, a rambunctious pooch, has a penchant for pandemonium. Wherever he goes--""WHAM!""--he creates a trail of disaster, leaving broken china, overturned furniture and overall chaos in his wake. When his young mistress calls him in to breakfast, he bounds inside and hurtles through the house, leaping onto beds (""Mom and Dad were fast asleep. Tucker didn't mind""), licking faces and knocking absolutely everything out of whack. He may be a trial and a tribulation, he may be the source of much exasperation, but lucky for him he's a much-loved dog (""Such a nice dog. Such a friendly dog. Who could possibly scold him?""). Tucker's boisterous energy emanates from each element of this tightly knit collaboration, even the typeface--surging across the page in uneven, curving lines and varying in size, it makes as much of a statement as Tucker does. Nash (Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp) pares down the compositions and revs up the motion. His kinetic watercolor, pencil and ink illustrations harness Tucker's exuberance and send it zooming over the spreads. Readers are likely to get swept up in the momentum. Ages 4-8. (May)