PRAIRIE DOG SUMMER

The story, of Paul's month-long stay in a tent as assistant to Uncle Joe, who is studying prairie dogs, is secondary to the conservationist message here, which might have been more strongly made as straight non-fiction. (Remember McNulty's successful Whooping Crane (1966) and Must They Die? (1971) for adults.) However Paul's observation and his growing concern for the prairie dogs, who are threatened by boys with guns and then by the rancher who plans to poison them, will get across to other would-be naturalists, and Bonnie Johnson's drawings are as pleasantly low-keyed as the text.