A storytelling goose and a duck who wants to manage her in a show-biz career provide the framework for these five fairy-tale-like stories. In the first and longest, a meanly treated little swineherd is left behind when his master and mistress take off to see the world; then a stranger arrives to take him in hand and reveal to him his own and the world's possibilities. The other four stories are in the form of animal fables: about a vain rooster and a mirror, a mill pony who finds that going in a straight line is not so different from going in a circle, a truth-telling alligator who is discombobulated by the foolish experiments of two human researchers, and a self-pitying raccoon who stops complaining when she takes up the flute. All are gracefully, entertainingly told, as might be expected, but none makes a strong or mind-jogging point. Lubin's drawings take an unusual--perhaps too unusual--approach to the reality-within-fantasy form; Fox on the other hand seems content simply to follow established tradition.