THE BOOK OF GIANT STORIES

Three giant stories and four lame limericks, in oversized and overreaching format that promises more than Harrison delivers. Verbally too the stories promise too much -- they move with dispatch and flaunt an ease with words; even the nonsense sllybles have some snap -- but they all boil down to coy or corny fancies: In the first, the little boy's secret which scares away three giants turns out to be incipient measles, and in the last another giant's temper tantrums cease when the little boy teaches him how to whistle. Phillipe Fox's pictures, drenched in earth tones and fond minutiae, place the sympathetically human giants in a thatched-roof and half-timbered fairytale land where the gnarled trees, out of Rackham through Anglund, typify the tone. In short both author and artist exhibit here a facility all out of proportion to their sensibility.