SHOESTRINGS

When wordless picture books were still a novelty this fantasy about a little girl who is having trouble tying her shoes might have rated a moment's notice. Even then, however, your attention would not have been rewarded by any alluring scenes or witty sequences. Instead, crayony pictures in a cheap cartoon style show the overalled child sitting legs apart, in an unvarying upside-down Y on the page, while her unruly shoelaces rise and grow into vines, seaweed, lollipops . . . hearts, balloons, bubbles . . . and finally a spaghetti-like double-page tangle. All thumbs.