Tulip Loves Rex

Little Tulip loves to dance. “While the other babies were learning to crawl,” writes Capucilli (the Biscuit series), “Tulip was ready to spin.” At the park with her parents, Tulip finds a big, yellow dog with a tag that reads, “My name is REX I am not quite like other dogs.” Instead of playing fetch or obeying commands, Rex loves to dance, too. It’s a perfect match, and Tulip’s parents don’t put up one iota of resistance: “A rather large dog named Rex who loved to dance? They didn’t mind a bit!” This slip of a story, with its unnecessary lapses into lesson-imparting (“We all have something we love to do,” Tulip tells Rex. “We just have to discover what it is”) is greatly invigorated by Massini’s (Trixie Ten) buoyant portrayal of her irrepressibly terpsichorean heroine. Whether Tulip is dancing on her bed (her legs just so, her arms arched gracefully in the air) or twirling through a tulip-studded park with Rex (who has some impressive Baryshnikov-like moves himself), she is the very picture of unadulterated joy. Ages 4–8. (Jan.)