AUTHORIZED AUTUMN CHARTS OF THE UPPER RED CANOE RIVER COUNTRY

Not a collection of maps, serious or spoofy, but a pair of roguishly offbeat canoe safaris, laced with nature lore and straight-faced absurdities, in the second-person style of A-B-C instruction. In ""The Nutting Woods"" readers are directed to drift by canoe to a pool in the river (A), take a tranquilizer gun (for the wild boar) and a burlap sack (for the nuts) to the embankment at (B), then gather the nuts, play games to shell them, share them with the squirrels, and roast and eat them at point (W). ""The Ox-bow Expedition"" offers a chance to play river pilot in a hide-covered boat that attracts flea fish, guided by the flavor of the native wild cranberries (""travel only through the tunnels where they stay refreshingly tart""). Despite the picture book format (the softly monochromatic pictures precisely echo Cohen's tongue-in-cheek ""realism"") this will appeal chiefly to more sophisticated children who might be inspired to devise their own charts.