FLOUR BABIES

Simon Martin, troublemaker and shambling hero to his school's unruliest element, has visions of a massive explosion of flour in a classroom—an idea so persuasive that, put to his mates, it causes them to take part in a baby-care experiment that involves treating sacks of flour as infants. With plenty of grumbling and not a few mishaps, the boys take to their tasks; the results are sometimes dire but always revealing. What at first recalls Bunting's Our Sixth Grade Sugar Babies quickly becomes a tender, funny study in child development—but the child is Simon, not the flour ``daughter'' to whom he's now 100% attached. His feelings for ``her'' even generate some understanding of his own father's abandoning him when he was a few weeks old. An ably drawn cast, including worn-down Mr. Cassidy (who finds reassurance, in Simon's burgeoning baby love, that his teaching has not been entirely wasted), prevents the broad farce from dissolving into slapstick, though the physical comedy is among Fine's best (she wrote Alias Madame Doubtfire [1988], prototype for the recent film Mrs. Doubtfire, and has just won the Carnegie Award for this book). A wry and warming look at a boy's inner musings; readers may be surprised to find the lug Simon inspiring in them an affection much like the one he has for his flour baby. (Fiction. 11+)