ELIZABETH'S SHOPPING SPREE

Elizabeth had, ""...a hundred million billion trillion zillion dollars and forty-two cents,"" so she went shopping and asked advice of everyone she met about what she ought to buy. She followed up on their balmy suggestions and bought big until she wound up with 33,000 mink coats, 355 stray kittens, 2 white mice and, among other things, had the satisfaction of helping an animal trainer ransom his yak back. This plays to the early childhood urge to exaggerate numbers to the ""zillion, trillion"" figure, but it misses the spontaneity of that sort of infant impromptu. Although the ridiculous should not be blamed for having no practical purpose, the jacket copy's lilting suggestion that this offers insight into the handling of money is upside down advice. The author/illustrator's fine hand at zany details was evident in I Know a Giraffe (1965 -- p. 307-J-99). This time he has provided infinitely intricate line drawings against bold color pages. However his human figures depend for their comic grotesquerie on enormously exaggerated bosoms, bellies and noses. Their total effect is the same sort of crafted but hostile graphic satire regularly achieved by Susan Perl in her adult cartoon books.