BIG THUNDER MAGIC

When old ""Great Chief"" leaves the Pueblo to visit the city, he takes his sheep, Nanabee, with him. The hotel doesn't allow sheep, so the two sleep in the park; but the park doesn't allow sheep either, and Nanabee is locked in the zoo. All this is observed by Nanabee's friend Thunderspirit--a small, timid ghost who has just enough magic in his medicine bag to free Nanabee so that they can all go home to the Pueblo. This wry, laconically whimsical tale can be read as a parable of the dominant culture's failure to include Amerinds on their own terms, though Strete is wise enough not to weaken his case by overstating it. Brown's soft, pointillist-dot and watercolor illustrations, in the same effective style he used for The Patchwork Farmer (1989), cloak the Southwest setting in gentle mystery and depict the little-ghost with humor and affection. Unusual and intriguing.