The Immortal Rooster and Other Stories

In this anthology of five slice-of-life stories, De Anda offers a companion to The Ice Dove and Other Stories. In the book's title tale, Grama rescues a rooster from ""the pound"" and brings it back to her son and two grandchildren at their West Los Angeles home, hoping it will be the entr e for a special Sunday dinner. The story line offers a chance to introduce Grama's own childhood duty of killing a rooster with an axe for supper, but graphic depictions of the children's father attempting three times (and failing) to strangle the fowl seem too violent for the target age group. The final tale, ""The Visitors,"" also features the plight of an animal: two boys rescue a baby opossum after their dogs kill its mother and later come to accept that it would be better off on its own than held in captivity. The changing perspective in the narration (shifting among various children and adults) makes these two tales hard to follow. In ""Dancing Miranda,"" the heroine must recapture her love of dancing; Miranda feels guilty after learning that her mother's childhood bout with polio left her unable to dance. But here, as elsewhere, characters are not developed strongly enough to engage the reader. Final artwork not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. (May)