GATOR PIE

A chocolate-marshmallow-coated lesson in fractions emerges when Alvin and Alice alligator find a pie of that description near the swamp and more and more of their kind assemble to share it. Calculations keep pace with the crowd: with eight alligators on hand, for example, each slice will be one-eighth of the pie; but finally 100 alligators are clamoring for a share, and Alice has to cut one hundred one-hundredths. Finders end up keepers when all 98 moochers take to fighting each other for the biggest piece (just in case they weren't evenly cut) and Alice and Alvin run off with the pie and consume fifty slices (""exactly one-half of the pie"") each. Bassett's alligators give the arithmetic lesson a sprightly look, but their fracas is less diverting than her rabbits' more varied antics in Bunches and Bunches of Bunnies (1978). Still, a classroom pickup.