TIKKI TIKKI TEMBO

What's in a name? Too much when Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo falls in the well and his younger brother Chang tries to tell their mother what's happened. So long does it take him to say it, so long does it take his mother and the Old Man With the Ladder to understand it, that poor Tikki tikki tembo is in the water for a long time, so long ""that the moon rose many times before he was quite the same again."" And that is the end of long honorific names for first sons in China. What's too much for safety is just right for story telling and tongue twisting repeating, of course, and now, with Blair Lent's drawings, for reading aloud. They're different from what he's done since The Wave--line and wash instead of woodcut, calculated rather than prodigal a skillful counterpoint of diminutive detail and spacious landscape and a fine setting for a sprightly folktale.