STARRING MIRETTE AND BELLINI

Alas for sequelitis, which so often produces watered-down offspring from even the most venerable parentage! When the great aerialist and his carrot-topped young partner cap off their European tour with a performance in St. Petersburg, Mirette comments on all the impoverished peasants; Bellini, with the encouragement of some friends, assures the crowd that they will one day be free. The czar's soldiers arrest him. The next night, having conveniently located Bellini's cell window, Mirette walks a wire (shot by a handy crossbow) in darkness and hands him a hacksaw. A page later they're in Paris. While McCully informs her figures and turn-of-the-century locales with the same grace and vigor that earned Mirette on the High Wire (1991) its Caldecott Medal, small vignette illustrations on two spreads seem, confusingly, suspended in midair; in the arrest scene, Mirette's costume is slightly different in scenes on the wire, platform, and ground. Combined with the agenda-laden, drastically abbreviated plotline, such bobbles, though minor, ground this follow-up.