THE GREAT TEXAS HAMSTER DRIVE

Kimmel spins out an original yarn featuring Pecos Bill, Slue Foot Sue, their five children and 18,376 hamsters. When the youngest young’un, Slue Foot Sal, asks for a pet hamster, her fond parents oblige. Unfortunately, she gets two—and in no time a scampering swarm has fanned out over the prairie, nibbling down the grass and spooking the longhorns. Fortunately, Bill knows a man in Chicago who’ll take them all (for pets). Unfortunately, they’ll first have to be rounded up and herded to the railyard in Abilene. Using a palette of invitingly pale, warm hues, Whatley depicts squads of smiling, irresistibly cute hamsters in close-up ground level and underground scenes being herded by broad-faced, comically confused-looking “cow” pokes in full western gear. Readers who didn’t get their fill of hamsters from Peggy Rathmann’s 10 Minutes Till Bedtime (1998) will scurry after this rodentine rout; it also makes a good match for Barbara Ann Porte’s A Turkey Drive and Other Tales, illustrated by Yossi Abolafia (1993). (Picture book. 7-9)