ONE MONDAY

Annabelle the farm girl knows something strange has blown into town when she is awakened on Monday by the tickle of billowing bedroom curtains. Outside, it's so windy that a mouse sails by on a paper airplane, the barn's windmill stoops and "the tin roof banged like thunder." Each day brings an escalation of gusts: by Friday, the frogs can "belly-surf" on the trough, and the poor Holstein is stripped of her spots. Finally, the wind exits—only to be replaced by a downpour so prodigious that the farm animals get outfitted in raingear. In her first children's book, Huntington writes with the homespun exaggeration of a tall tale: "On Wednesday, it was so windy,/ carrots and turnips twisted out of the garden beds,/ and the corn picked itself." (Throughout, the typography looks a little wind-tossed, too.) The light, elegant touch and dry wit of Huntington's double-spread watercolors make it possible to believe that anything is capable of being airborne—even a passel of plump farm cats. This tale shares a premise with Phyllis Root and Helen Craig's One Windy Wednesday (1997), but Huntington's originality is never in doubt. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)