JACK KENT'S TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Jack Kent's hyperkinetic cartoon style is better suited to the ludicrous extravagance catalogued in the old song than to the more elusive messages of Aesop (KR 1972), and his progressively overpopulated pages make the stocking-capped, button-eyed recipient's panicky flight on the eleventh day of Christmas seem the only sane alternative. Nonplussed at last, her persistent true love seeks her through the final pages, and we leave them thus in mad pursuit, the issue of that last potted pear tree forever unresolved. Catchy.