LATKI AND THE LIGHTNING LIZARD

Latki loves the canyon but her two older sisters long for the finery and social life of a town. A more sympathetic third sister, Seri, sighs and tells stories of faraway places. Then--abruptly--the girls' father, a woodcutter, offends the lightning lizard, who appears in a chain tunic and demands a daughter in payment for being disturbed. The rest tells how Latki saves Seri from the lizard--after arbitrating an animal dispute en route--and how she returns for visits to her beloved canyon after the dead lizard's riches allow the family to move to town. A small ironic twist has the two disagreeable sisters marrying the mayor and the banker--just the fate they deserve, one agrees--but the whole story is a hodgepodge that doesn't cohere; and Carrick too, despite a garish standout of a lizard, seems uncertain about its tone.