THE UGLY BOOK

As spoken perhaps by the ugly little man we see in every picture, this is one long mock-grumble about the ugliness of things usually considered beautiful. According to this, both butterflies and flowers are ugly time-wasters and trees just ""provide a place for horrid beasts to live. . . where birds can build their smelly nests. . . . I don't believe you'll ever see/ A thing more UGLY than a TREE."" The moon and stars are seen as ugly, too, and the sun is just a dirty double-crosser who wakes us up too early, lets you down at night, and so on. In Gusman's crayon-textured pictures none of these objects is especially ugly or beautiful, just kind of freaky, like a tamed and prettified hippie-druggy fairyland. All this may strike a child's sense of contrary nonsense, but hasn't the grab or cleverness of the same pair's Bogey Man and Wagon Man.