MISS TWIGGLEY'S TREE

It's a smoothly rhythmic nonsense rhyme which goes out on a limb to present a moral about the dangers of finding fault with eccentric neighbors. ""Funny Miss Twiggley/Lived in a tree/With a dog named Puss/And a color TV."" Her peculiarities endear her to the local animal life, but she's too shy to have anything to do with the local townspeople. They take offense at her seclusion, interpret her harmless behavior as undesirable and declare her a town nuisance until she provides succor to them all during a major flood. They discover how badly they had misjudged Miss Twiggley; she learns to break out of her isolation. Miss Twiggley isn't a very easy person for children to identify with, but the book may help to combat the derision young people often display toward the odd neighbor.