JACK AND FRED

The family of Jack (the rabbit) is drawn with mock-first grade naivete — as a not very human conglomerate of wavery ovoids and doodled faces. They live on a similarly uncoordinated street of primary colored bravura. So it's not at all hard to believe that Jack, longing for a pet, could — by dressing him up in a suit of clothes — pass off a homely mutt as "my friend Fred" and get him invited home to dinner. Fred uses a chair to prop up his forelegs when he watches TV and slurps his food, and kids will surely agree with Jack's Mom that Fred is "a funny looking friend for Jack." Barton uses all the limitations of primary school artwork — distorted proportion, identical facial expressions, exaggerated postures — to create a slaphappy mood, and humans can laugh at Fred and Jack's little joke — wondering all the while who is deceiving whom.