TWITCHELL THE WISHFUL

Mouse Twitchell's wistfulness comes in the form of envying his friends' possessions. He longs for Claudette Hedgehog's red brick fireplace, Jacqueline Chicken's silver-buckle shoes, Granville Horse's violin, Thackary Ram's table, and Norman Mule's annual trips to Australia. But when his friends, to make him happy, give him all the things he's coveted, he realizes that they are not for him. He then takes a fancy to Dawson Ox's dishpan, but with the same outcome, as Dawson has expected. Stevens' black-and-white drawings are up to the prevailing standards for such fare, but there is nothing in the story or pictures to distinguish this from a whole list of similar unispired picture books (several of them by Sharmat) in which an animal with a foible is set straight by kind friends.