HOT CROSS BUNS

Compared to most of the musical street cries assembled here, ""Hot Cross Buns"" is a full-fledged aria: here, in four or five bars, are cries for ripe pears, old clothes, peas, walnuts, and so on--with the kind of pleasant, characterless pictures that one often finds in, say, Pilgrim books. A resourceful teacher could probably make something of the idea of a characteristic call for each product, and the music-and-drama department might be intrigued by the idea of adding street criers to a period play; but as a children's book this is meager fare--an ornament, no more or less, to the collection.