LITTLE LITTLE

With his humped back, his fang tooth, and his twisted leg, the worldly-wise dropout Sydney Cinnamon--abandoned as an infant and employed as a kid at the dwarf-staffed Leprechaun Village--is no suitable match for Little Little La Belle, elder daughter of the town of La Belle's leading family. Little Little is Perfectly Formed despite her abnormally diminutive stature, and thus, in the eyes of her claustrophobic, over-anxious mother, meant to associate only with other PFs. Nor does Sydney's present TV-commercial fame as The Roach enhance his eligibility. Instead, Little Little's mother and preacher grandfather have chosen another PF diminutive, the white-suited preaching sensation Little Lion, as a worthy mate. Though Little Little is not enthusiastic about the self-absorbed evangelist, their engagement might be announced at Little Little's 18th birthday party, an elaborate affair to which her mother has invited multitudes of carefully selected (PFs only) TADs--members of a national organizaton of ""diminutives."" But The Roach, who has known Little Lion as Opportunity Knox back at Leprechaun Village, shows up in La Belle that same weekend, and the overprotected but independent Little Little likes his style. Roach, she tells her father, is a survivor. He is smart, sassy, clear of eye and mind, and, unlike Little Lion, basically decent. He has also read almost every work of literature that features dwarfs or monsters, and he expands Little Little's horizons with his ""weird"" library. Mostly, Roach is his own person, as Little Little proves to be hers; and he will win readers too with his tough, survivor's integrity. When all three points on a teenage triangle are little people in a world of normals, the most ordinary situation takes on a new edge. And when Kerr puts her hand to an underside view of Rotarian America--complete with TAD boosters, a Japanese go-getter, his stereotype-flaunting son Mock, a small town unsettled by the perceived invasion of foreigners and dwarfs, and devastating family squabbles--the old targets of satire are exposed from yet another sharp, scathing angle.