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Besides those wolves, the book's two young heroines come with a complete set of Victorian manners: one of them almost starves to death in a train compartment because her Aunt Jane has told her never to eat in the presence of strangers. Recounting their gothic torments at the hands of a cruel governess called Miss Slighcarp and a harpy schoolmistress named Mrs. Brisket, the author sometimes pirouettes on the filigreed edge of outrageous literary parody without ever undermining the suspense of a story suitable for anyone from seven to 70. Wolves, in fact, is almost a copybook lesson in those virtues that a classic children's book must possess; charm, a style of its own, the skill and authority to create a small world without writing down to small readers.
Not in a class with Wolves but never theless notable beyond customary levels of bland competence are two other volumes, one crazy, one compassionate.
Roosevelt Grady by Louisa R. Shotwell (World; $2.95) is remarkable not merely because it is a good story that creates its own world—the life of a small Negro boy with his migrant crop-picking parents—but because it could so easily have been a tract on today's worthy Topic A. Grady is bright but is kept from progressing in school because the beans, or the strawberries, or whatever his parents are working on at the time always run out and the family has to climb into its rattly truck and move on. Time is measured not in months but in crops. Grady took sick in onions. His baby sister Princess Anne was born in tomatoes. Life has anguish, too, all the more effective because the author and the characters take it as much for granted as beans, onions and drawing breath. "You be the welfare lady," one girl says to another. "Pretend like to knock on the door. Then come in all snoopy and la-di-da and ask a lot of questions."
Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein (Harper & Row; $2.95). Using the name Uncle Shelby and the title Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, Silverstein last year produced a children's book of unparalleled vulgarity. And Lafcadio sometimes sounds like a bedtime story as it might be overheard at the Blue Angel. But children as well as adults are likely to find Silverstein's rueful lion drawings and shambling style hard to resist—especially in an age so clearly ripe for a parable about a big cat who learns to like elevator rides and toasted marshmallows only to find that sophistication has rendered him unfit for the jungle.