TWYLLYP

A cluttery-muttery, mumble-jumble which reminds the reader of Walt Kelly's Pogo, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and several of the Dr. Seuss books-- but, the final scramble here lacks the spontaneity, clarity, and humor each of these have. The fun-with-words aspect (which is the predominant characteristic of the book) is clever, but there is too much of it stretched out, unsupported by an interesting story or pleasing illustrations. Twyllyp, a young Zyzrbian with a bent talkstalk and no pokwocket, is mocked by his own kind; he sets off in space and lands on Earth. The them-looking-at-us element, which takes up the last half of the book, is only momentarily amusing, and interest in the unfortunate Twyllyp is at a low ebb by the time the last pages are reached. The black and white pictures wander around the pages, edging too close to the print; they are uncontrolled and distractingly busy. There are mushrooming morals; there are pokes at a conformist society; there are tiresome tongue twisters; but there is not a strong groundwork for any of these factors to rest on, and the end result is a stab at sophistication without foundation.