Dave & Janes Adventures with Lewis & Clark

The vivacity and inventiveness that gave Knox's previous Dave and Jane outing (The Great Art Adventure) its sparkle seem to shift into overdrive in the New Yorker cartoonist's updating of the famous 19th-century expedition. Exploring a neighborhood named Wilderness, the kids use the journals of Lewis and Clark as a kind of aid to creative visualization. Excerpts from the explorers' notebooks, misspellings and all, make up the text; the physical landmarks, flora, fauna, weather conditions and local inhabitants they describe turn up in full-page collages stuffed with an exhausting jumble of visual puns, surreal landscapes and scattershot images totally unrelated to the Northwest Passage. The considerable romance of Lewis and Clark's journey evaporates amid this feverish attempt to prove history a wild and crazy affair. Ages 7-12. (Nov.)