THE LIVELY ADVENTURES of a Burly Woodcutter, a Pint-Sized Inventor, Two Pretty Pastry Cooks, and a Gang of Desperate Criminals

If you scan that title and find it lively then maybe you'll agree with the designation of Lively Adventures for the text; if the broad, heavy slapstick humor of, say, a Punch and Judy show is to your taste, then maybe you'll find this burlesque melodrama amusing. It's a romantic quadrangle involving the stupid Mr. Tall and the clever Mr. Short, who are chosen, sight unseen, as suitors by the two pastry cooks, tall Miss Rosebud and short Miss Lofty. The young ladies settled on Mr. T. and Mr. S. on the rebound after they discovered that the group of peculiar, gnomic creatures who had been wooing them were actually trying to get their store. The second romance proceeds slowly by a correspondence of engraved invitations, is complicated at the initial rendezvous by a mismatching, but true love via physical size wins out in the end. The drawn out text is varied with alternating type arrangements, and interspersed with frequent pen and ink caricatures. The humor is quite Teutonic, which may appeal to some adults, but children will find it plain tedious right in proportion to the subtitle.