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NEW CLASSIC FROM E.B. WHITE

THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN, by E. B. White, Harper & Row. 210 pages. $4.50.

EVERYONE who enjoyed "Charlotte 's Web" and "Stuart Little" - and they must number multitudes across the world - will delight in E. B. White's new book about Louis, the trumpeter swan born without a voice. These 210 pages are a wealth of delight, whimsy, fantasy, humor, each blessed with the grace, clarity and simplicity of E. B. White's immaculate prose style. We have one quarrel, however, with the publisher. The dust jacket, and sticker pro- claiming this to be a 1970 Honor Book in the Childrens Spring Festival discriminates against adults. No matter whether you are . aged six, or 16 or 60, the chances are you will find delight in "The Trumpet Of The Swan." Mainers should take special delight and pride in knowing that E. B. White wrote this book in Maine, at his home in. Brooklin. The story involves 11-year-old Sam Beaver,

who, while camping out in Western Canada with his father, discovers a pair of

trumpeter swans nesting on a remote lake. Before his astonished eyes, the female hatched her little trumpeters. One cygnet, Louis, is born without a voice . . . a trumpeter swan without a trumpet! To make up for nature's mistake, voiceless Louis decided he should learn to read and write, so off he flies to school with his friend Sam. After mastering reading and writing with a slate pencil upon a small blackboard, Louis wings his way home to his Trumpeter Swan family in Red Rocks Lake, Montana. Around his long neck he carries his blackboard and chalk pencil, but no other swans can understand what he writes. Serena, the beautiful female swan with whom Louis falls in love, especially has no idea of the love in Louis's heart. Being dumb, Louis cannot trumpet his love, calling 'Ko-hob! , as a trumpeter swan' should. So Louis' father decides to fly off to Billings, Mon., to rob a music store aud bring home a man-made trumpet for his son.

Louis becomes so expert on the man-made trumpet that he gets a series of jobs,

first at a ·camp blowing reveille, mess calls and taps. He next lands a job in the Public Gardens at Boston, leading the swan boat and blowing tunes and arias on his trumpet. Boston is enthralled ; record crowds flock to the lake and Louis becomes so great a celebrity that he stays at the Ritz Carlton, where he orders watercress sandwiches sent to him by room service. Louis's next engagement is at $500 a week, playing at a nightclub in Philadelphia and living at the zoo. One stormy day a badly buffeted trumpeter swan finds refuge from the storm by landing on the lake at the zoo. The swan is Louis' first love, Serena. This time Louis serenades her with his trumpet and off they fly together to Montana, where Louis turns over to his father

almost $4,500, earned from his career as

trumpeter swan. The story is beguiling and charming , a White's tales always are, the prose as lucid and clear as the water of a wilderness lake And as· the story of Louis' adventures unfold it is entrancingly interlaced with the lore of wildlife and nature, and with the elfin laughter and joy which is E . B. White's hallmark.

.Bill Caldwell'

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