Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout

Sloat (Sody Sallyratus) sets the cumulative chestnut about the voracious old lady in the Pacific Northwest, and endows her with an endless appetite for aquatic wildlife. The heroine starts her meal with a trout ""that splished and splashed and thrashed about./ It wanted out!"" A cast of characters highlighted in similarly simple but satisfying rhymes follows, as Sloat puts the lady through her paces. The verse culminates in the woman gulping and regurgitating the entire ocean. Ruffins's (Running the Road to ABC) vision of the title character is an earth mother clad in a colorful costume that, on one spread, echoes the hues of a hilltop totem pole. His ebullient paintings of coastal scenes both above and below the water wittily show off the old lady's expanding physique. The naif perspectives, redolent with marine colors and textures, capture both the lyricism and cheery humor of the rhyme. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)