HURRAY FOR PIPPA!

Four more tiny stories featuring Pippa Mouse--more purely for entertainment this time than on previous occasions. The first finds Pippa and friend Cricket frolicking in the brook--discovering that neither can cross it in a single jump, and that each has to save the other from sinking. ""Pippa's Cleaning Day"" winds up, sensibly but uninspiredly, with Pippa stowing her old playthings in a new play house. The third and fourth stories turn, more suspensefully, on small mysteries --but mysteries that may be somewhat babyish for most beginning readers. Who is ""The Scary Somebody"" making nuts and stones disappear? (It's Small Rabbit, who has to learn ""how to play the right way."") And, in ""Pippa's Magic Mystery Party,"" what is the White Ghost Foot thumping in the woods? (It's Small Rabbit again, ""all covered with snow!"") There's some insinuating incantatory dialogue in that last one, and all of these winsome pleasantries are easy to take--though just about as easy to blot out.