THE DANCING SKELETON

A storyteller shares a tale that must be a favorite with her audiences--a yarn about an ornery corpse that comes back to plague his widow, rocking in a chair by her fire until he's reduced to a skeleton. A clever suitor manages to get rid of him by playing his fiddle, so that the skeleton dances himself apart and can finally be buried--though the skull has the last word. In deft line and glowing watercolor, Parker's illustrations capture both the humor and the delicious, eerie thrill of a memorable, adroitly told story.