Why the Banana Split

The creators of Pig, Pigger, Piggest here dish out a kid-tickling serving of humor, illustrating a sequence of punning variations on verb phrases that can all be translated, roughly, to mean ""exit."" This is exactly what the characters (some human, most not) do when a gigantic dinosaur appears, baring his enormous, sharp teeth. Jump ropes ""skipped town,"" astronauts ""took off,"" frogs ""hopped a train"" that then ""made tracks"" and (in a triple whammy) ""the bananas split, peeled out, slipped away."" Walton stretches his concept with some of the entries (e.g., baseball players ""struck out on their own"" and trees ""took their leaves"") and indulges in several groaners (shoppers say ""Good buy,"" and shopkeepers add, ""Buy buy""). Depicting amusingly frantic faces on a variety of inanimate objects, Holder's stylized, fittingly exaggerated cartoons will wring chuckles from the audience. Although their worldlier parents may want to take a hike from the one-joke wordplay, kids riveted by puns will guffaw. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)