THE BLUE THING

A sort of free-floating, alternative origin tale, about an unnamed thing that turns up out of nowhere: ""It was a blue thing, sort of a seed thing, and it was very small. . . . It stayed very small for a very long time,"" but at last in spring it starts to grow--as big as a frog. . . a fox. . . a house. . . a town. . . . Eventually, perhaps when you see the spot of blue ""as big as a mountain and getting bigger,"" you'll catch on; if not, the last picture, all blue above the wavey line that signifies mountains, will confirm that what the small blue thing has grown into is the sky. Slight, but Pinkwater's spacey, craftily simple drawings make that seem a virtue.