Brewster the Rooster

Brewster is crowing at strangely inappropriate times and it's driving everyone on the farm crazy. The cock-a-doodle-do that he lets loose when Grandma's flipping hotcakes ""sent the poor woman reeling./ She shrieked at the sound,/ started slipping around,/ and got batter all over the ceiling."" All the grownups are stumped until Little Julie-""the youngest and often ignored""-figures it out: Brewster needs glasses, and until he gets them, he's going to keep mistaking things that are ""light, big, round and bright,"" for the sun. Scillian (A Is for America) takes his time unreeling Brewster's verse story, which may try the patience of some readers, but White's (The House Takes a Vacation) hyperbolic pictures move matters along. Although visually Brewster himself never quite fills the comic shoes that the text lays out for him-in fact, he often seems incidental to the compositions-White's technique of combining velvety textures with angular, exaggerated shapes is eye-catching, and there's enough slapstick to satisfy young funny bones. Grownups looking to inspire a first-time glasses wearer, however, will probably want to look elsewhere. Ages 4-8