LITTLE GORILLA

Even when he was only one day old, everybody loved Little Gorilla."" Bornstein's list of those who did--Pink Butterfly, Green Parrot, Red Monkey, Giraffe, etc., ""even Big Boa Constrictor""--gives her a chance to parade the usual jungle denizens across her flat, conventional pages. But showing each of them in a posture that is somehow indulgent toward Little Gorilla (Old Elephant gives him a shower with her trunk, Lion lets him pull his tail) makes for only a minimal variation on the usual animal album, and Bornstein's text follows up with even less: ""Just about everybody. . . loved Little Gorilla! Then one day something happened. . . Little Gorilla began to grow."" But the reversal these words seem to promise never does occur, for after he grows BIG, ""everybody still loved him""--and of course no one ""begins to grow"" on any given day. Anticlimactic.