THE CASE OF THE MISSING KITTENS

Henry the Explorer's moplike dog Angus was one of the attractions in that series of neighborhood adventures, but on his own, as Detective Angus setting out to find and rescue wounded Mrs. Friday's missing kittens, Angus is just too straight and simple to fill in for the imaginative Henry. (Fortunately, at 7"" x 6(apple)"", this lesser story has less room to fill, and the smaller pictures are a modest, scratchy ink blue as opposed to Booth's familiar shimmering color.) In his search, Angus pokes around by the river and in the bushes, where he is startled (but only that) by a muskrat and a skunk respectively; but he finally does save the kittens from a huge rat when he finds them in a deserted old house. There the rat and Angus' puzzled ride in a dumbwaiter pick things up after a slow start, but even in Booth's pictures, which have a nice spooky look but make the dog scurry like a fuzzy worm and rear up with a nightmarish large head, Angus is less captivating in the lead than as a supporting player. Auxiliary.