Four Fur Feet

Playing Clement Hurd to the late, great Brown is a tall order for any illustrator, even when the volume is no Goodnight, Moon. Brown serves up contagious rhyme with an alliterative sing-song refrain: ``Oh he walked around the world on his four fur feet,/ his four fur feet,/ his four fur feet./ And he walked around the world on his four fur feet/ and never made a sound-O.'' Faced with the challenge of visualizing the perambulating fur-footed creature, Hubbard (Hip Cat) responds with a roughly drawn, vaguely schnauzer-like animal; this banana-yellow beast boasts indeterminate red swirls that indicate wavy hair, and it appears flat as a paper cutout. The artist's opaque gouaches, solidly rendered in a childlike hand and in the zippiest of palettes, have the simplicity of Brown's tongue-twisters, but not their liveliness. Ages 3-8. (Nov.)