POOR EATERS Helping Children Who Refuse to Eat <i> by Joel Macht (Plenum Press: $19.95) </i>

This is not a cute little book about how to get Johnny to eat his green beans, or how to wean Sheila from her peanut-butter-and-jelly diet. “Poor Eaters” is both solace and warning for parents whose children express such relatively insignificant gustatory preferences.

Joel Macht, a professor of educational psychology at Arizona State University, writes about real problem eaters, tiny victims of physiological or psychological distress who simply refuse nourishment. The good news is that they can be helped. The bad news is that they can be fostered by even the most well-intentioned parents, if those parents fail to heed the danger signs.

Macht writes about case histories in a rather detached, academic tone, but the dryness is probably what makes it possible for the reader to get through these heart-wrenching anecdotes without bursting into tears. He tells one story after another of children--some infants, some as old as 7 or 8--who cannot manage “P.O.,” or “per oral” feeding. Some march around with feeding tubes protruding from their stomachs; some panic at the mere sight of a spoon headed in their direction. Macht is the therapist-as-detective, hired to ferret out the reasons for food aversion and slowly bring a child back to the land of the living and eating. For parents of such children, “Poor Eaters” represents nothing short of salvation, and for the rest of us, it offers valuable information on how to communicate with a tiny being who is totally dependent and frightened, and often unable to say why.