NO BATH TONIGHT

Some people must think kids are dumb. Here's a boy who, on Monday, hurts his foot stepping on a king in the sand (a figurine—if you can figure that out); on Tuesday, hurts his backside sitting on a "pricker bush"; on Wednesday, hurts his nose sliding into first base—and on these and like pretexts, gets out of taking a bath for a week. Then his grandmother capitalizes on his interest in tea leaves by proposing that they make "kid tea"—that is, put him in a bathtub and, from what appears in the water, see what he's been doing all week. It's ingenious, you can say that, but the relation to real children in real life is imperceptible. And, for all that it matters, the illustrations are similarly "cute" and vacuous.