HOW FAR WILL A RUBBER BAND STRETCH?

One day a little boy decided to find out how far a rubber band would stretch. So he put one end around his bedpost and walked out the door"" -- then biked down the road, got on a bus, took a train, then a plane, a boat, a camel, and at last a rocket to the moon, where suddenly ""there was a great BOING which landed him back in bed."" And there in his room you can see both the moon-patterned wallpaper and the toy bus, camel, rocket, etc., that might trigger such a dream. To base a book on one such indifferent concept is indeed stretching a gag pretty thin, but Thaler gets a big assist from Joyner's pictures, which begin in a sort of '30's comix style zapped up with shimmery, fat, black shadow-lines, but gradually as the fantasy progresses to the sailing ship at sea, the desert scene (complete with patterned rugs and pots and Arab clothing), they become much finer, more detailed, and more real. Farther, then, than you'd expect.