CHAD AND THE ELEPHANT ENGINE

Acrobat boy, elephant boy, acrobat boy, elephant boy, say the wheels of the circus train, summing up Chad's conflict between Papa's insistence that ""an acrobat family is an acrobat family"" and his own interest in tending the elephants Queenie and Sheba. Disgrace comes when Chad's hands, blistered from carrying the elephants' water, miss the balls in his juggling act, but then when the train engine proves insufficient for pulling the circus cars up a steep mountain it is Chad who conceives and carries out the idea of coaxing Queenie and Sheba to become a ""second engine"" and push from behind. Somehow Chad's moment of glory convinces him to stay with the family act, which makes for a pat and arbitrary solution to a stock problem. Still the circus setting has an intrinsic appeal and neither Stover nor Brown exploit it with ballyhoo or hokey glamour.