RINALDO, THE SLY FOX

In the crime spree that is this easy chapter book's focus, the eponymous villain is part rogue, part gentleman-bandit, part duty- shirking Tom Sawyer. Rinaldo doesn't miss a trick: nestling into hotel life long enough to steal a valuable necklace from a feckless hen before ducking the bill; getting the owner of a glitzy car to participate in its theft; tricking an army of animals into planting a crop of corn for him. But for dissecting the criminal mind, none is better than Bruno, the Duck Detective; and when the two old enemies finally face, readers will be in a fine fettle trying to determine just who won. In the never-ending struggle between good and evil, perhaps it doesn't matter. Those just mastering reading will light into this funny adventure, which pays homage to the clichÇs of the suspense genre as easily as it parodies them. Fortunately for moralists, Gider's vivid watercolors take the sting out of Rinaldo's mischief; in these scenes, he seems a benign smirker who, though doing no one any good, is not really doing them any harm, either. (Fiction. 7-9)