IF I WERE A TOAD

A continuation of Paterson's double-page, hand-lettered, confrontation schtick (Smile for Auntie, 1976), featuring a bloated, protean child opposite the animals she apes. The changes are from crab to beaver to bear and so on, until Father and reality appear in a conventional capper. He wishes he ""could be a big bear giving my little girl big bear hugs."" Her transmogrifications are often unpleasant and sometimes startling, as when a sprawling, foreshortened crab/girl looms out from the page. Repellent, pint-size grotesqueries.