RHINOS FOR LUNCH AND ELEPHANTS FOR SUPPER!

A little hare is terrified when she comes home to hear a voice booming out of her own cave, proclaiming itself a voracious monster. A fox who offers to drive the monster away proves to be just as easily frightened, as do a series of ever-larger animals. In the end, it's a doughty little frog who waves her walking stick and rousts out the source of the scary voice: a cheeky caterpillar. Mollel, whose retelling of another story from his Maasai heritage, The Orphan Boy, is a Notable Children's Book for 1992, tells this amusing cumulative tale with a verve that especially recommends it for oral sharing; Spurll sets her wonderfully expressive animal characters in a carefully composed jungle attractively bordered with a lively geometric design, adding such delightful touches as a bespectacled leopard reading to her wide-eyed cubs. Delightful. (Picture book. 3-8)