PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

The midnight message of Paul Revere is intoned here against a chalky gray sky, and the drama of its dissemination to every Middlesex village and farm is acted out by wittily sketched figures whose wry informality is no doubt intended to make Longfellow's melodrama less forbidding to the picture book set. However, explicit, realistic illustrations might have served the purpose better by allowing youngsters to relax and enjoy the gathering momentum of the verse; though Low's drawings are fun in themselves, they are unlikely to bring the poem within the range of the average five year old, and kids who do appreciate the words may find the pictures childish. Low achieves neither the humorous iconoclasm of Fritz' And Then What Happened Paul Revere? (KR, p. 1100, J-344) nor the dignified flourish the poem seems to call for; his in-between course might fred its own followers, but at just what age level is hard to say.