BENJAMIN'S PERFECT SOLUTION

A tacky Ugly Duckling, Benjamin longs for quills like ""the other porcupines"" and tries to fake them by covering himself with all sorts of inept imitations--feathers, matches, branches stuck into a coat of mud, and finally, on the chipmunks' suggestion, a strawberry-shaped pin cushion to hold the bogus quills. But nothing works until the oddly designed pin cushion gets him stuck in a tree, where a female stranger, hanging upside-down, informs him that he's not a porcupine but an opossum like herself. Except for the bright red pin cushion, Woldin's monotonous drawings are done in a brown line so faint and fuzzy that they almost fade from sight. But the idea is even dimmer.