MR. SKINNER'S SKINNY HOUSE

Everything in skinny Mr. Skinner's skinny house at 1(apple) Bedford Street is skinny--his oboe, his giraffe picture, the spaghetti he cooks, the pot he cooks it in. Even the snowman in his garden is skinny. For pets to keep him company, he buys a dachshund and a snake--and lively companions they are, as they caper through the skinny pages. Still lonely, however, Mr. Skinner invites first one, then another friend or relative to share his house--but each in turn finds it too small for his or her activities. (The actor, for example, can't rehearse in his Pinocchio costume: his nose keeps bumping into the wall.) McGovern and Gerberg make clever fun of all the comings and goings, and a nifty fit of the inevitable solution--clarinetist Ms. Thinner, who pops up in the nick of time and to whom Mr. Skinner proposes ""when the new moon was a thin slice in the dark sky."" The wedding party is a ball, and the whole enterprise represents vertical living at its sprightliest--with a sound structure and plenty of space at the top for all those high spirits.