LITTLE WOLF AND THE UPSTAIRS BEAR

The perennial picture-book search, in which a small animal asks directions of one after another different animal, is transported here from the barnyard to a city apartment building--where Little Wolf, who has just moved in on the first floor, is sent up on the elevator to meet the son of the ice cream seller (a bear). Moving up floor by floor, Little Wolf meets an ostrich, a hippopotataus, a tiger, a giraffe, and so on--all of whom, in one stage of preparation or another, are too busy getting ready for a party to give him much help. There's one allusive exchange for the fairy-tale wise: ""We don't want any wolves around here after what they did to Little Red Riding Hood,"" says Buster Bear at the door on the tenth and last floor; but when Little Wolf asks, ""Didn't your family frighten Goldilocks?"" he's invited in--to the rooftop party where, as foreshadowed, the whole ten-storey cast has gathered. Obligado's urbanized version and decor-ated pictures are diverting, though her flourishes are essentially icing on a cake that is more deeply satisfying taken plain, at an earlier age.