THE PARADE OF LITERARY ANIMALS

Author: By Peter F. Neumeyer

Date: SUNDAY, October 5, 1997

Page: C3

Section: Books

To begin with books created for the Pooh set: Just what is it about bears that inspires writers/illustrators and seems to touch the hearts of toddlers? In the Winnie the Pooh vein, Martin Waddell adds cunningly to the store of well- and simply-written adventure books paced for those for whom the world is very new. In the case of ``Small Bear Lost,'' little bear takes a train, is lost, finds his way home, waits for ``the girl'' -- who finds him and is happy. The layout and Virginia Austin's watercolors remind us of a world of perhaps 50 years ago -- a comfort to grandparents. This fact is noteworthy because many children's picture books today are illustratively adventurous, even avant garde. That can be either exciting or garish. ``Small Bear Lost,'' however, is comfy -- and textually and illustratively familiar.

Harry Horse's first picture book, ``A Friend for Little Bear,'' could become a classic. It could, were it not for today's realities: too many books, short shelf life, and massive store-returns, as dictated by the commercial acumen of the 26 percent of bookstores owned by chains.

Horse's Little Bear is biologically kin to Waddell-Austin's, but without the sailor suit top, which makes him a sort of peewee noble savage, living in solitude on a desert island, salvaging flotsam playthings washed ashore. Among these trifles is a white wooden horse with red spots. But Little Bear lusts for one specific item, a cup with which to fill a bottle. So consumed is Little Bear with this desire for the one thing without which his life seems incomplete that his mountain of accreted possessions topples into the sea. At this point he learns he has lost what really matters -- his friend, the wooden horse. The ending has all the reassuring completion necessary for whoever's in your lap.

My job here notwithstanding, I have no explanation for why this book is so satisfying. Which may suggest that somehow Harry Horse has been kissed by the same evanescent muse who presided benignly at the birth of Margaret Wise Brown's ``Goodnight Moon.''

Barry and Madeline Moser (father and daughter) have assembled in ``Ever Heard of an Aardwolf?'' a menagerie primarily of exotic fauna ranging from the aardwolf to the emperor tamarin. The volume demonstrates notably the sort of coherence and unified artistic vision we come to treasure.

Barry Moser, influenced early by Leonard Baskin, has for many years been one of the most powerful American engravers -- a man whose incisive cut can bespeak rage, irony, high good humor. His previous illustrations for the ``Brer Rabbit'' tales, for ``Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,'' for ``Beauty and the Beast'' are classics, not only for their execution but for their keenly original insight. Whether it's in the man or the medium, power and an often frightening vision (I use the word premeditatedly) are defining traits in Moser's engravings.

And so, even in this latest ``children's book,'' although the ``bush baby'' may be potentially cunning, the ``loris'' odd, and the proboscis monkey whimsical, Moser's animals have stiff, spiked fur and wary, haunted eyes. The book ends, after this succession of exotic beasts, with the simple joke of rendering plain old ``horse,'' but Moser's equus is no nibbling, nudging nag, no playful pony. With its wild, panic-eyed head, mane flying, teeth bared, it has all the madly unpredictable otherness some of us do feel in the presence of horses. Moser's use of synthetic wood as an engraving medium conveys an immediate sense of kinesthetic and organic power passing from artist to medium to viewer.

This is Madeline Moser's first book. Her fact-packed, spare sentences have a direct high seriousness befitting God's wonders. Rendered in sculptor-typographer Eric Gill's beautiful ``Joanna'' type face of the 1930s, the text becomes integral with the illustrations. Add Judith Sieck's title page, derived from 16th-century Spanish letterforms, and the whole becomes an exhibition of thoughtful bookmaking even in these precarious late times. A literate and informative appendix adds more substance. And the visual game played between dust jacket and cover is a delight.

You could not find a book more different -- and comparably beautiful -- than DK's ``The Snake Book.'' Its 19-inch double spreads display a dozen scaly, glittering, curled snakes, all writhing muscle, seeming at times to burst the fragile white margins containing them. The spare but informative text is artfully distributed on the page, within the coils of the snakes. The sentences are at times strained, and the claim that it's a legend that a rattlesnake's tail warns of danger is a misstatement. No mere legend -- I know.

But of the color, motion, power of Frank Greenaway and Dave King's photographs, you can only say, as the poet Dryden wrote of Chaucer, ``Here is God's plenty.''

SMALL BEAR LOST

By Martin Waddell, illustrations by Virginia Austin. Candlewick Press. $15.99. Ages 4 to 6.

A FRIEND FOR LITTLE BEAR

By Harry Horse. Candlewick Press. $14.99. Ages 4 to 6.

EVER HEARD OF THE AARDWOLF?

``Compiled'' by Madeline Moser, illustrated by Barry Moser. Harcourt Brace. $16. Ages 5 to 12.

THE SNAKE BOOK

Photography by Frank Greenaway and Dave King. DK Publishing. $12.95. Ages 5 and up.