THE LADY WHO DIDNT BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS AND OTHER STORIES. Ford, Frederic C. Illustrated by Michele Gould. Toronto, Childe Thursday, c1985, 160pp, paper, $6.50, ISBN 0-9691203-9-7. CIP Distributed by Childe Thursday, 29 Sussex Ave., Toronto, Ont., M5S 1J6. Grades 12 and up Reviewed by Joan VanSickle Heaton Volume 13 Number 5 1985 September The ten stories in this collection share themes of fantasy set against mundance and familiar Toronto landmarks. Ford begins each story with a homey description of an ordinary character, then adds a peculiar twist to the circumstances, launching the plot off into another plane of improbability, and leaving the reader with the job of reconciling the routine and the unreal. This formula is successful in varying degrees throughout the collection. Some of the stories are compact and complete; others lack cohesion and seem abandoned at the end. All of them develop some aspect of human behaviour, logical under normal circumstances, but stretched beyond the limits of endurance by the fantastic element. This is as close as the author gets to moralizing, the exposing of the limits of acceptable behaviour. In "Subway Story," a group of ordinary citizens find themselves imprisoned in a stalled subway train, and have to rely on their survival instincts at the expense of decency. In "Breakout from the Big Zoo," a group of men kidnap a Siberian tiger doomed for extermination, and are aided by the ability of the men to speak to the tiger in his own language (not Russian). The plots are light, description is clear, and the pace is quick. It is not a profound work, but it does provide entertaining notions. Joan VanSickle Heaton, Bayridge S.S., Kingston, Ont.