"What pet can I get? What pet can I get? What pet can I get? What pet can I get?" demands the young boy in this quirky, extraordinary, wildly artistic picture book. And indeed, it is hard to choose given this fantastic menagerie of "Kissing pets/Hissing pets/Even tail-missing pets" and "Round pets/Crowned pets/Coiling-around pets." Author Melrose Cooper, who has said that guinea pigs look like "little meat loaves with eyes," concocts delightful, childlike rhymes that collide exquisitely with artist Yumi Heo"s fabulously madcap, folk-art-style illustrations. Heo, illustrator of The Rabbit"s Judgment and The Rabbit"s Escape, creates funny, boldly colorful, flat, dynamic paintings that are akin to the work of New Yorker artist Roz Chast, Lane Smith, and Maira Kalman. Comparisons aside, however, Pets! stands on its own four feet as a uniquely endearing, offbeat tribute to animals of all shapes and sizes, and to the children (and adults) who want them all. (All ages)