THE STRANGE BUT WONDERFUL COSMIC AWARENESS OF DUFFY MOON

Though friend Peter, the narrator, is skeptical, Duffy the pint sized dud is sure that Dr. Louis Flamel's $7.98 home study course in cosmic awareness will help him to unlock the hidden secrets of the galaxies and bring success and power into his life -- so sure in fact that after receiving the skimpy booklet which constitutes the course he actually does become a kind of superkid, building a stone wall single-handed and coping with a baby sitting and a dog washing job that even the older kids' monopolistic Help Is Here agency can't handle. A trip to Dr. Flamel's seedy digs confirms Peter's doubts and strips Duffy of his last 40 cents (for a cosmic talisman), but by the time he realizes that the charm doesn't work, Boots McAfee -- the legendary Help Is Here boss he feared would beat him up for horning in -- turns out to be a gift who offers him a piece of the action because of his growing fame as a neighborhood plant doctor. Duffy's self-fulfilling confidence is of course a considerably more shopworn notion than the intergenerational conspiracy that T. K. Dearing (KR, 1973) had going for him -- though Jean Robinson's same easy touch makes it all mildly engaging.