DIRTY BEASTS

A dozen or so rhymes, this time, about people-eating, people-pricking, -stinging, -soiling creatures: altogether, a glut of dirty beasts—pictured more freakishly than humorously in waxy cartoon-paintings. There's the clever pig that, in a closer approximation to poetic justice than most, puzzles out "What LIFE was really all about"—and fearing the worst, eats Farmer Bland first. There's that dependable hair-raiser, the child-crunching crocodile: "He smears the boys (to make them hot)/ With mustard from the mustard pot./ But mustard doesn't go with girls,/ It tastes all wrong with plaits and curls./ With them, what goes extremely well/ Is butterscotch and caramel." The Scorpion: "He wants to make a/sudden jump/And sting you hard upon your rump." Some variety is supplied by "The Toad and the Snail" wherein the little-boy-narrator goes flying off for a ride on a giant toad—a Magic TOAD who turns first into an ENORMOUS SNAIL, and still fleeing those "most peculiar" French eaters, then becomes a POLY-POLY-BIRD. Formula material—with formula appeal.