TAXICAB TALES

Ten vignettes from the lives of a Manhattan cabdriver and his family, faithfully recorded by his daughter Abigail—despite her occasional doubts that Daddy's stories about his more unusual passengers (a man wearing a donkey head, a boy with a pet goose) are 100% true. The matter-of-fact style—long on dialogue, short on description—and rather abrupt endings to some chapters are appropriate, given the narrator's age. Definitions of a few special words—``matinee,'' ``maharani,'' ``concierge,'' ``penthouse''—are worked into the dialogue, apparently just for fun since the plot could get on without them. Abolafia's color illustrations (e.g., for Porte's Harry books) are somewhat more appealing than the b&w drawings here; still, these are in keeping with the small-scale, amiable stories. Children who met this good-humored, slightly offbeat family in The Take-Along Dog (1989) will enjoy finding out more about them in this early chapter book. (Fiction. 5-10)