WRETCHED RACHEL

Sometimes when she isn't being very, very good, Rachel is very, very wretched."" She ties up her mother in a cage of rope, drops the cat on her sleeping father, insults her aunt and uncle, and generally acts as repulsive as Paterson's characters always look. But: ""Sometimes when she isn't being very, very wretched, Rachel is very, very good""--and the second half of the book shows her playing checkers with her father, complimenting her aunt and uncle, and so on. Paterson concludes that either way, ""everyone loves her just the same""; but with no plot to keep them guessing or psychological hook to cement identification, readers are likely to lose interest when Rachel stops acting up.