NATE THE GREAT AND THE SNOWY TRAIL

Once more Sharmat turns primerese into tough-guy quips as her trench-coated little detective searches for he knows not what. Rosamond can't tell Nate what it was that fell off her sled and disappeared, and she can't tell him what it looks like--for the lost object was Nate's birthday present, five months early. (Rosamond is a little flakey, but there's method in it.) And so Nate, who takes her case reluctantly, knows only that what he is looking for must be strange (being from Rosamond), and that it had to fit on her sled with her four cats, Super Hex, Big Hex, Little Hex, and Plain Hex. As is his custom on a case, Nate makes the rounds of his friends, which occasions some funny remarks, and soon he has put the clues together and found his unwanted (and unaccepted) present: Super Hex. Brisk and bright as always, with pictures of a lovably scowling Nate and a voguishly strange Rosamond (a sort of cross between Really Rosie and the Charles Addams lady) for added appeal.