MR. TERWILLIGER'S SECRET

It's marked ""R.L. 2.1 Spache Revised Formula,"" but otherwise there are few of the hallmarks of an easy reader here: the line-breaks are very arbitrary (""Mr./ Terwilliger""); the phrasings are not readily comprehensible (""Mr. Terwilliger asked Joel and Margaret a favor""); some of the text is even set against a dark background. The story, moreover, is one extended picture-book-type yuk: Mr. Terwilliger, who lives in Margaret and Joel's apartment house, keeps a dinosaur in the basement; when he goes away for a day, they promise to feed her; but they're late, she's gone, and they get into various small troubles before getting her safely back home. When Mr. Terwilliger returns, he has a second dinosaur. . . . Even a woolly mammoth would have given this a lift--but as it stands, it scores C- for inventiveness and barely passes as an easy reader.