THE SCREECHING DOOR: Or What Happened At the Elephant Hotel

There really was an elephant-shaped hotel (though Wahl doesn't say so here) but we doubt if there were ever two such revolting fatties as Effingham Runkle, Jr. and his kid sister Myrtle Flossie. (The button-popping grossness of Higginbottom's drawings is worthy of Steven Kellogg.) When Effingham and Myrtle are not stuffing themselves with triple-dip cones they are running around with their salivating dog Cicero and expressing disgust at their parents' ideas of vacation fun. Naturally enough when everyone in the seashore town warns them against the boarded up elephant hotel that's just where they go, and appropriately enough the ghost they raise there in the dead of night turns out to be a very hungry one who follows them home and runs the whole family ragged with his demands for MORE and MORE food. Obvious soulmates, the ghost and the children are soon friends, and they all gorge themselves ecstatically at a giant clambake, after which the transparent visitor wades off into the sea and vanishes forever. Perhaps all this prodigious scoffing performs the same function for the kids as other feats do in adult pornography--in which case the flimsiness of the plot is beside the point.