NO BITING, HORRIBLE CROCODILE!

Flora, the class biter, is shocked out of her habit when she sinks her teeth into a plush monkey's arm, and it rips off. The text is short, wooden, and more or less unnecessary, as Mu§oz's simple watercolors tell the whole tale. Flora creates a tearful scene in the background when her father drops her off at school, she's shunned by her classmates and walks about wearing a homemade crocodile mask as she searches for new victims. Once the mask falls off to signal her dismay, she is quickly accepted. The illustrations are appealing and provide visual subtext, too, as the unnamed young narrator's skin, though varying slightly from page to page, is plainly darker than her blond mother's. Shipton (Busy! Busy! Busy!, 1991) leaves readers with a simplistic (not to mention inhumane), cut-and-dried solution that is unlikely to make an impression (so to speak) on either the biters or the bittenstick with Barbara Bottner's toothier Bootsie Barker Bites (1992). (Picture book. 4-6)