GRANFA' GRIG HAD A PIG and Other Rhymes Without Reason from Mother Goose

Tripp's oversize package is chock full of rhymes, some of them new to us, but the thrown-together look doesn't invite browsing. Neither do the crowded double pages--each shared by several rhymes with separate illustrations--reward attention: most of the high-pitched pictures are surprisingly uninventive. And where one picture does get a full double-page it proves either too slight to survive the inflation or discordantly frenzied--as is the family of madmen dancing in hell, where a claw-footed Hitler in uniform and holster lines up with Cerberus and other stranger creatures. (Most of Tripp's characters are animals but there are other human caricatures--Teddy Roosevelt appears as the drummer boy of King Cole, a lion.) And as for the stabs at verbal wit, neither the doctor in ""An Apple a Day"" (a duck berated as a ""Quack"" and ""Hippocratic oaf"") nor the tub of ""Rub a Dub Dub"" (it's named ""Quiet Desperation"") will mean much to the nursery rhyme audience. Overall, aggressively tasteless.