ARION AND THE DOLPHIN

This retelling of the ancient Greek tale of Arion the musician and his dolphin friend receives fractured, confusing treatment. Arion, court warbler of the tyrant Periander, is allowed leave Corinth to attend a music festival in Sicily. After winning gold, he sails home, but meets with treachery and jumps overboard. Arion is saved by a dolphin, and helped back to his home port. Periander doesn't believe Arion's story; the poet is jailed and the dolphin dies in captivity. Periander abruptly takes Arion back to his bosom. Told as a story/song, there is enough contradictory behavior here to disenchant most readers. The crew and captain are smitten by Arion, then want to kill him; Periander is downright schizophrenic. Prose and lyric never meld, and the rhymes often feel forced: ``With you I will remain,/ For if we part, we'll never meet again,/And I will die of loneliness and pain./ This I maintain.'' The scenery, though lush, has little Grecian fragrance. (Picture book/mythology. 6-9)