R MY NAME IS ROSIE

Rosie Gold, just under eleven in 1949, does have a lot of problems--she's fat and friendless, her mother's too busy running the New Jersey inn they live in to give her the attention she needs, and she's not allowed to have a dog. But even sympathizers are likely to get tired of her moping about. For consolation (until in the end her birthday brings a puppy after all) Rosie, in tandem with kindly bartender Tex, makes up a running fairy tale about a Princess Rosalie in the Land of the Three Roses. Briefly, the princess is reared alone in a tower, and escapes on her eleventh birthday to a tyrannized, dangerous kingdom, which she then saves--and inherits--by virtue of her willingness to sacrifice herself for its lowliest subjects. This story, which takes up, off and on, about half the book, has as much charm as many that purport to stand alone, but it is more an interruption than an enrichment of the real Rosie's story. Though you can point to parallels they are not very edifying ones, and the inner and outer stories don't enlarge each other.