CHEROKEE BAT AND THE GOAT GUYS

Block's third visit to the pop L.A. world focuses on Weetzie Bat's teenage daughter and her lifelong friends Raphael, Witch Baby, and Angel Juan, who start a rock band (the ``Goat Guys'') while their parents are in South America making a film, leaving the kids in care of Native-American friend Coyote. In outline, Cherokee is simpler than the earlier books: four chapters (``Wings,'' ``Haunches,'' ``Horns,'' ``Hooves'') portray the young musicians' rite of passage into adulthood as each receives, as an apparently liberating gift, an object representing part of a mythical goat. Their empowerment is Faustian: the joy of creating the music and of sexual awakening are both lost in the demands of success and the seductions of the drug culture. Fortunately, this is a fable; in the last chapter (``Home''), Coyote awakes from his ``Dreaming of past sorrows and the injured earth'' to help his young friends recall themselves to a more wholesome being as their parents return. More predictable than Weetzie Bat (1989) or Witch Baby (1991), but Block continues to illuminate serious contemporary themes with fresh, tellingly allusive imagery and a wonderfully lyrical and original style. Not to be missed. (Fiction. YA)