WALTER, THE HOMING PIGEON

With a lift from Darrow's gently breezy pictures, this story of a dawdling racing pigeon glides along engagingly. Walter's owner has been training him with food to fly home from further and further away, but Walter has no way of knowing that it's all in preparation for a long-distance pigeon race. And so when he is released on the day of the race, Walter stops for food along the way. The home he stops at has a ferocious dog and an unwelcoming parrot; but the woman there feeds him. . . and what with one thing and another, he returns to her three times while his owner waits impatiently, losing money on the race. But Walter actually has come home, for when the fed-up owner disowns him, the kindhearted woman matter-of-factly takes him in. Agreeable, and then some.