Celebrating the joys of mud and the coming of spring, a playful storybook follows the transformation of frozen earth into mushy, delightful mud and explores all the wonderful, oozy ways to get dirty. PreSchool-Grade 2?What happens in the spring? Before the fruit blossoms, before the daffodils, even before the grass? Why, mud, of course. The earth secretly thaws, and one morning a child looks out the door and sees winter receding down a rutted muddy road. The leaves once trapped in old snow escape and fly away. Little puddles of water appear and the youngster takes off her shoes. Mud takes over the world. Feet in mud are happy feet. Hands in mud hold all the promise of green spring, soon to come. The free-verse poem evokes sounds ("squish, squk") and images ("hills remember their colors") and relates the action ("dig it! dance it!"). The first line, "One night it happens," may be the model for many students' future poems. Stringer's acrylic paintings give large scale to objects such as oak leaves that require nearly a full page to be expressed. The artist makes a pair of grimy feet jump for joy and feel good to be alive. A lyrical celebration of the cycle of the seasons.?Ruth Semrau, formerly at Lovejoy School, Allen, TX Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. The unjustly neglected subject of ``gooey, gloppy, mucky, magnificent mud'' requires a unique perspective to transform it from the mundane to the celebrated. That perspective is right here, especially in newcomer Stringer's inspired artwork. The joy of a child playing in mud is tied to the change of seasons in such lines as ``A cold sweet smell rises in the ground, like sap in the snow.'' Ray (Shaker Boy, 1994, etc.) uses spirited language to show a child's playfulness as the mud thaws and comes alive with spring. This blithe view of one of the building blocks of life can come only from close observation; the point of view is at ground level, where readers can visually muck around in all that goo. The transformation of winter frost to mud serves as a spawning stage for the green of the new season; it's a concept treated innumerable times in books but never quite like this. Wallow in it. (Picture book. 3-8) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.