WHEN COWS COME HOME

The author of Somebody Catch My Homework (1990) brings his skillful versifying to a slight, silly tale about a herd of cows straying from their homeward way at day's end (""But if Farmer looks/The other way,/Cows take off/On a holiday!/You never saw/Such cow horseplay..."" Whimsically depicted in airily limned illustrations splashed with sunset-hued watercolors, the errant cows trip a light fantastic while they play tag, square dance, and ""hitch their bikes/To Farmer's sleigh/To pull their babies/As they play."" They're about to escape out the gate when they spy Farmer and suddenly ""head for home/In a cowlike way"" after all. Presuming that the cows are surrogates for rambunctious children who really do come home eventually, the story works well enough; but the escapade is less apt, and not as funny, without a stronger parallel to real cows (who need to be milked when it's time). Still, the merry rhyming and the illustrations' blithe abandon may make this an effective storytime diversion.