LOVELY VASSILISA

Lovely it isn't--inside the multi-colored jacket are black-and-white crayon drawings that are both confusingly overelaborated and plain ugly, and a long, wordy, execrably-written text: ""Whenever Vassila's father was away on trading journeys, which was most of the year, [her stepmother] would work and starve Vassilisa nearly to death, she would beat her too, whenever she claimed Vassilisa was not working hard enough."" It's hard to imagine what point anyone saw in presenting this Russian Cinderella story in this doubly unengaging, utterly graceless form.