THE PEACOCK WHO LOST HIS TAIL

Pride goeth before a fall of feathers in this tale of a peacock who is so vain of his beauty that he gobbles up all the red berries that keep his tall shiny and colorful. The next day he can find no berries, and in the succeeding days his feathers begin to fall out until he has only a few left. The other animals, whom he had snubbed, laugh at him. The hippopotamus laughs, the baboons laugh, the buffalos laugh, the lions laugh. (Have you ever seen a lion laughing? Well, you will.) Of course, the peacock repents of his vanity, and, when the berries ripen again, his tail becomes beautiful once more. The downfall of the peacock is due more to his loss of distinction than to his bad behavior, his repentance due more to humiliation than to regret at mistreating others, all of which results in a mangled moral. But with this offering John Hamberger (The Day the Sun Disappeared) establishes himself in the rank of master illustrators. From the first feather embellishing the half-title page to the once-more-majestic peacock poised on a pile of berries, the illustrations are variously designed close-ups and long shots of the peacock's progress from snobbery to consternation to total dejection. A moderate reservation about the story, a minor reservation about all those realistic but uproarious animals, a strong commendation for the illustrations.