MR. CHRIS AND THE INSTANT ANIMALS

Chris is tired of waiting for everything--a pet, an allowance--until he gets older: ""I want those things RIGHT NOW!"" ""INSTANTLY...my dear Mr. Chris,"" booms a loud voice, and Chris finds himself in Dr. Hastily's Pioneer Timehop where anything is possible INSTANTLY, where ""FOREVER is WAS, NOW and WILL BE,/ While NEVER comes again and again."" But his box of Instant Animals turns out to be an odd assortment--vulture, crocodile, rhinoceros, feathered lion (two packages mixed together)--who wreck the apartment before each clatters or flaps or flies away. Seeing is believing and Chris' father does; next morning there's the very puppy Chris wanted in a box by his bed. The idea is amusing, the illustrations inventive, but the magic mixture of NOW and FOREVER doesn't quite dissolve; call it suspended animation.