HURRICANE CITY

Considering how hurricanes are named, it's not surprising that someone has thought of making them into an alphabet book; this portrait of a city where ``We get them big,/We get them small—/Sooner or later we get them all...'' is a mixture of tall tale (especially in the cheery abandon with which its people are pictured enduring the wind's pranks) and rueful plausibility. On the whole, though, whether it's ``Chester,'' whose rains enable dogs to surf in a grassy yard where a sunbather's about to be doused by an unexpected wave, or ``Tommy,'' who hoists an outfielder aloft to catch what should have been a homer, the comic spirit tends to prevail. The situations aren't all equally novel or clever, but kids will have fun checking out the details in the lively, windswept illustrations. (Picture book. 4-8)