SPEEDBOAT

Just when we'd had it with both easy-reading animal friendships and James Marshall's schleppy creatures, along come Jasper Raisintoast and Jack Tweedy-Jones, canine companions of complementary dispositions and discrete charms. While Tweedy-Jones, the homebody, stays behind (though his day does have its "ups and downs," as he puts it later without mentioning the bubblegum bubble that carried him into the sky), rip-roaring Raisintoast is off making a racket in his speedboat. You can't help feeling gratified when the stew he cadges turns out to be laundry water, when a mean, mustached lady (beaver) demands a kiss as a bridge toll, and especially when, showing off more recklessly than usual, he is at last waved in to join the "lovely creature" for whom he's performing—who then introduces herself as Sheriff Mackenzie and writes out tickets for "river speeding, foolishness and disturbing the peace of the river." But you can be sure that Raisintoast will rally. . . and ride right over Mole and Troll, Gus and Buster, and all those other poor copies of the matchless Frog and Toad.