WHAT CAN YOU MAKE OF IT?

From the seven vans required to move the Fieldmouse family you might take them for pack rats instead--with all the orange juice cans, milk cartons, toilet paper tubes, yarn spools, egg cartons, and old magazines that they just ""might find a use for some day."" Once in their ""new old house"" the fieldmice run into some storage problems, but when Uncle Alfred and Aunt Kate come to visit, and read in the old magazines about all the things you can make out of old orange juice cans, milk cartons, etc., the whole family has a ball--or rather a circus, with homemade animals, cages, trapeze, and, at the climax, a clown shot out of a cannon. Clearly the Brandenbergs have been exposed to the kindergarten crafts scene, and readers who have too will appreciate their ebullient solution to the ""rubbish"" dilemma. (And if Calder's circus served as further inspiration, that's as easy to overlook as are the Bloomingdale's, Zabar's, and D'Ag bags used in transit.) Kids can make of it what they will--perhaps a whole kitchen carton menagerie of their own.