Show CHILDREN DBKBH out on a quest to find Willy's old high school English teacher the only woman who ever understood him Canine and human worlds overlap and interact in this alternately quirky and graceful tale in which Mr Bones who realises that Willy is dying and heading for a mystic place called Timbuktu tries to work out his own destiny in the universe The story turns a bit mushy toward the end: still if the author feels that there are nice people as well as good dogs in the world what's wrong with that? Novels about dogs are by no means uncommon (remember Jack London's The Call of the Wild!) but Paul Austcr's Timbuktu ( Henry Holt $22) is a story with a charm all its own That’s because the dog in question by name Mr Bones has acquired Me Pleasures or understanding English (though unfortunately of speaking it) thanks to the incessant jabbering of his master a half-addl- ed homeless poet named Willy G Christmas Both man and dog are vagabonds by nature and they set W999 Arch Inc Afl nght From the Antazen to ice-cub- es in the process It even offers a moral — for the Gigantic which sneers at all the small craft that see it off on its maiden voyage later relies on them to rescue all hands Sclgin’s pictures are cheerful colorful and suitably wacky starring a timid lookout named Pipsqueak who vainly tries to warn the bumptious Captain Bragg of the impending disaster The book is listed for the 6 to 10 age group but with a Melville-lik- e opening and a few other advanced touches it would seem to require a degree of sophistication from its young readers laker Creek A sometimes nostalgic always evocative book called The River Reader published by the Lyons Press in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy ($30) gathers writings about the art not Is your child ready for a spoof of the Titanic saga? If so here's “&&” Gigantic by Peter Selgin (Simon & Schuster $16) which purand sinks ports to tell the story of a liner that smashes an iceberg into Across the Atlantic festrvtd rivers by authors from Joseph Conrad to Ernest Hemingway The pieces selected by the editor John A Murray are imbued with the special feeling a river journey can engender whether it's by steamboat or canoe The rivers covered range from the mighty Amazon (Theodore Roosevelt) to a Virginia stream called Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard) This is a book about floods Ashing and the simple pleasures of drifting downstream and it's enjoyable to read on dry land too UhvERiuDER |