THE STORY OF JAMES

Only the reader who has noticed the back cover here knows that Mom left a note when she took Baby home, leaving James (a pensive, sad-eyed, waif-like child) asleep by the stream. This makes the story James' dream: he catches a huge fish on which he perches while he fails to read the water-smudged note; puts the fish back in the water; and sets out to find his missing brother, meeting other creatures on his way to the sea, where he helps the fish again before going home--where his brother is after all. The dream sequence has a fey charm, and McPhail's facile pen ensures quaintly endearing characters; but the anxiety that produced the dream--failure to care for the baby--is disturbingly at odds with the warm reunion in the final illustrations.