Birds and Beasts

Some of the 29 poems in this letterpress edition are new, others are shuffled in from Smith's previously published work. The resulting potpourri is so diverse that it seems a collection of various writers rather than a unified assortment in Smith's splendid voice. The poems vary from the nonsensical (``If you should see / A spotted Cow go flying by / Above a pawpaw tree'') to the descriptive (``With tail atilt like a violincello, / Comes the Squirrel musically.''), but few match the verve and deft humor of Hnizdovsky's crisp black-and-white woodcuts that deftly characterize each animal. Ages 3-7. (Dec.)