THE SAD TALE OF THE CARELESS KLUNKS

This would make a wonderfully comic animated cartoon. Its success as a book before a juvenile audience will depend on the ability of the teacher who presents it. (Although its vocabulary is within the grasp of beginning readers, the text seems more attuned to the safety units suggested for pre-school and kindergarten children; hence its designation as a read aloud). The Klunk family is followed through a series of near disasters that could have been averted if a little care for simple safety rules had been observed but they live in a rush and never ""stop. ..look...listen...read signs...think...or care."" The active cartoon figures are bedizened with bandaids, and the safety message comes across with slapstick/pratfall humor in three colors.