DADDY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A GIANT ANYMORE

When Daddy is ``acting like a giant,'' he hides whiskey bottles, sneaks off to get drunk, skips work, argues with Mommy late into the night, and terrifies his daughter. (``When he bent down and shook me, he was bigger than a house.'') A turning point is reached when friends and family gather to confront Daddy with his deficiencies as a brother, son, employee, husband, and father. Feeling ``small as an ant,'' the daughter (who narrates) listens to accounts of Daddy's bad behavior and irresponsibility, including driving drunk with her in the car (``We almost skidded into the ditch''). Her chastened father enters treatment, and when he returns they dispose of his hidden whiskey bottles together. If this by the author of (Lights on the River, 1994, etc.) implies that children of alcoholic parents could (and maybe should) make such interventions themselves, it captures, with heartbreaking simplicity, their confusion and unspeakable sorrow. Sewall's illustrations show the little girl's unhappiness all too well. (Fiction. 6-8)