BABAR'S MYSTERY

There's no guessing what's afoot as first Babar's piano disappears, then his car, then the gold statue he's scheduled to unveil (helas! a crude dummy). The one clue, a glove Flora finds on the sidewalk, takes the family on a day's outing to a glove-seller's at Mont Saint Georges (better known as Mont Saint Michel) but otherwise leads nowhere: the lion wearing its double turns out to have a complete pair. So the reader must patiently wait until Arthur spots the stolen car, suspiciously loaded, heading for the shore—where four (piano-coveting) crocs and a Godfatherly rhino are about to cast off with the statue. However—and this is the book's one bright invention—the Old Lady is holed up writing her memoirs in an overlooking lighthouse, and there the thieves are trapped. . . while the Old Lady makes her escape in a suspended basket used before to send up her lunch. The pity is that de Brunhoff—who earlier has Celeste chastised for suspecting the cigar-smoking rhino "just because of the way" he looks—didn't plant a trail of clues in his typical crowd scenes, thus permitting youngsters to out-sleuth Babar & Co. Or, for those who retrace their steps, didn't offer more than a premonitory glimpse of a departing piano. It's all too blankly mysterious to be much fun.