RINKIN OF DRAGON'S WOOD

Rinkin, a young fox, sets out to see the ""dragon"" he has heard so much about from the other animals. The many incidental adventures of his odyssey are quite likely to happen to young foxes. They are compounded of his inexperience and the natural cycle-of-life in the wild. Although some of the descriptive passages are notable for the imagery employed, the total anthropomorphism becomes a bit too much. The wind speaks, drops of water warn of danger, insects chirp out poetry and all the animals converse. It must be noted that Miss Colson is artful in assigning all these with dialogue which suggests their chief characteristics. Nevertheless, it all boils down to a fire-breathing locomotive that the animals have decided is a dragon. If everything else is allowed to speak here, it seems reasonable that the railroad tracks should have clicked out that information. On the whole, the book typifies the England-to-America import dilemma. The vocabulary is suitable for better readers in this age group, but the conception and treatment of the story seems more like something we offer our younger readers in picture story format. The small, black and white illustrations of Pat Marriott are excellent and there is a glossary of the English provincial words used in the text.