JAGUARUNDI

Rundi Jaguarundi's neighborhood (the rain forest) is getting overpopulated, so he teams up with Coati Coatimundi and calls a general meeting of the local fauna. All agree that there is a clear and present danger, but most opt for adaptation rather than flight. Only the lone twosome—Rundi and Coati—head for a new frontier. They travel north to the Rio Bravo, to where the forest canopy is crowned, to the promised land. But the classic theme of pursuing happiness and rejecting compromise founders when the two inexplicably set their stakes, after a long, tough haul, near humans. They decide that they will now fit into that habitat and live (that strange emphasis is in the original). Hamilton's (Plain City, 1993, etc.) story leaves readers dumbfounded and not a little bit disappointed; Cooper's atmospheric animal illustrations convey a moodiness but offer little else. Strangely, despite its Greener-than-thou tone, this book is complacent: Animals can adapt, but not as easily or quickly as implied here. (Fiction/Picture book. 5-12)