WHEN I'M ALONE

In descending numerical order, a little African-American girl describes the animals that make a mess while Mom's occupied in her study: ten rowdy aardvarks climbing into kitchen cupboards, nine sleepy lions in her bed, etc. It's all a bit predictable, with Ochs's verse rather obviously contrived to fill out the meter (not always successfully). But the narrator expresses his pleasingly imaginative ideas in a likable voice (``They trampled on my mother's roses/And smudged the windows with their noses. One tangled up the garden hoses./What problems a herd of camels poses!'') In Redenbaugh's color-pencil art, too, the child is full of wholesome vigor, while the nicely characterized animals add to the humor, and Mom's indulgent skepticism helps bring the story to a satisfying close. (Picture book. 4-8)