CROCODILE AND PIERROT

Like the same pair's counting book, Ten What? (1975), this story in pictures packs more distraction into the parts than sense into the whole. The main plotline (?) deals with a Pierrot who takes a napping crocodile's doll (baby?) from a park bench. As soon as you catch on to what's happening, which isn't that obvious with all the other people, objects and transactions scattered about the pages, you can follow the crocodile as it follows the culprit through the park, along a street, over a bridge, etc., etc.—until at last, with Pierrot busy toasting the bride at an outdoor wedding feast that appears with the turn of a page, the crocodile retrieves the doll. (The falling action has them deciding to share the baby, and going off lovingly together.) Other figures (masked bandits, sailors) recur in the various scenes, but nothing comes of that; nor is there any rhyme or reason to Hoban's selection of objects (umbrella, guitar player, pigeons) to affix with the picture dictionary-type labels which constitute the only words in the book. As before, Selig's mod, deco revival, '60s-style cartoons are clever—on the novelty level.