ONE DAY IN THE DESERT

A wisp of an incident overloaded with factual matter—too much factual matter for the young, picture-story format in any case. What happens, in brief and in sum, is that a wounded mountain lion lies down in the doorway of a Papago Indian hut; and when its sleeping occupants, Big Wing and her mother, are awakened by a thunderclap and see the lion, they take refuge on the mountain side—thus escaping the flood-to-come, and saving their lives. Also interwoven with the Lion's movements (in much greater detail than the Indian bit) are the activities of a coyote, a roadrunner, a group of peccaries, a tarantula and a headstand beetle, a tortoise, a kangaroo rat, and others—constantly breaking the thin narrative thread. (There is also a separate description of each of the deserts "marked by distinctive plants that make up the great North American Desert, which extends from central Mexico to almost the Canadian border"—totally extraneous information for the purposes of the book.) Among other superior entries along these lines is George's own Moon of the Wild Pigs (1968).