IN A BLUEBIRD'S EYE

Way up yonder above the sky/ A jaybird built in a bluebird's eye. . . ."" That's a little song Honor Jane whitfield, eleven years old, sings to herself when she's feeling low. She's been feeling low a lot lately because everybody in Margate, Tenn., knows that her father, the school principal. is onto too much bootleg whiskey and besides, her mother is forever scolding, reminding Honor Jane how gawky and ugly she's getting to be and then pining for her own, more privileged, girlhood on the Delta. On top of that, or maybe beneath it all, it's the Depression era and the mining company which just about supports the whole town is moving Out. So do the Whitfields when Daddy turns over a new leaf in Kentucky. In the meantime Honor Jane has a few growing-up experiences--eavesdropping on the town whore in action and trying to help her confidante, black Loin, escape from being sent back to prison. Carson McCullers it surely isn't, though Mrs. Kornfeld has an eye for detail. But the pace is so lethargic that a constant reader might well turn blue pinching herself awake.