PINCHPENNY JOHN

Once again, more loosely than in last year's Scornful Simon, Lorenz borrows some sequences from Chaucer and illustrates to suit with robustious, free-for-all cartoons. The carpenter's wife in ""The Miller's Tale"" becomes a granddaughter here and the bawdy elements are scratched, but there is lots of nonstop action, with Nicholas the lodger snatching the carpenter's hidden money hoard, his disillusioned accomplice Allison attacking him with a burning stick, and the bamboozled carpenter, interpreting his cry for ""water"" as the signal for an apocalyptic flood, crashing down from the rafters in his floatable barrel. Meanwhile, to keep things hopping, we have on one double page Allison's view of the lively fun and games at the fair Nicholas promises her--and, on another, the mock turbulence, replete with lightning and wild waves and sea monsters, of Nicholas' predicted cataclysm. In short, another successful, high-energy romp.