SUMMER OF THE WHITE GOAT

It's the summer of Montanan Gordon Mohlen's 12th-grade advanced biology project, ""Field Report on Mountain Goats""--a remarkably sophisticated one, using tranquilizing darts, radio collars, and a tape recorder for notes. Gordon follows one nanny and her kid in particular, observing a season's worth of the dangers they're exposed to on Almost-A-Dog Mountain: eagles, mountain lions, avalanches, and snowstorms. When Dixon sticks to straight reportage, this is an interesting, detailed account of the species' life and habitat, focusing on kid rearing, and including the lonely, higher-altitude existence of the billy goats. But the literally cliff-hanging adventures of the boy scientist are superfluous in this wildlife report.