THERE COMES A TIME
By
A German legend tells of the three kings on a journey to Bethlehem ""and the names of the places where the kings stopped were the names of the months. . . . That is the story of these twelve poems."" Some persons may have difficulty with the unpunctuated free verse but the conceits are charming, the imagery particularly fresh--which is why it is particularly regrettable that the illustrations often ignore or controvert the text. In January ""Caspar calls/ Then a star with long golden hair comes flying by"" which you'd certainly want to see but you shan't; in February a crow ""perches on an icefloe"" which is novel to most children and indistinguishable in cubic form; April brings wind ""that blows a man's hat off his head/ O! cries the man where is my hat/ O! cries the hat where is my man"" and well they might since neither is in evidence until the following page when ""the wind has long since gone away"" except in the storm-tossed picture. There are mismatches also in May, June, August and October. . . and yet when you reach November and December, the verses are so glorious, the paintings so Suggestively right, that the preceding might be dismissed as annoyance. If you reach November and December.