TICK-TOCK

By the team that created No Problem, another funny story hinging on how to make a mechanical contrivance work. With one last caution—``no jumping on the chairs!''—Mom Squirrel is off. She's no sooner gone than Skip's friend Brainy leaps in and the two bounce into Mom's favorite cuckoo clock, breaking it. Rushing it through the woods (as detailed in a frieze across the bottom of the pages), they take it to Weasel's bike repair shop. ``A puncture,'' is Weasel's diagnosis, but neither the patches she glues on nor the air she pumps in helps. Nor do the soles Hedgehog applies to the clock at her shoe emporium. Owl, who does know about clocks, gets the pair home before Mom—but when the clock strikes, the cuckoo says ``whooooo.'' Snappy dialogue and the incongruous prescriptions for the ailing clock propel the classic three-part plot while Parkins conjures up a crowd of intriguing details with agile, busy pen lines resembling Ronald Searle's. Good comic fun. (Picture book. 4-8)