WIM OF THE WIND

From Belgium, the mildly engaging tale of how a poor basket weaver on the Flanders flat-lands turns the bothersome and destructive sea wind to his advantage. First he makes a sheepskin ""windflower"" (pinwheel) for his daughter's amusement, then he constructs a ""giant windflower"" (a rudimentary windmill) to turn his wife's wheat grinding stone, and at last he teaches the other peasants to turn back the sea with the same device. Though there are two spots where the text calls for visual elaboration that isn't there, Miche Wynants' patchy illustrations, in which the figures are defined as much by areas of white space as by the flat crayoned slabs of color, have a flyaway frangibility that is nicely suited to the windy setting.