THE DAY SUN WAS STOLEN

Come winter, the bear hibernates and many other creatures grow warm coats. The reasons for this are explained in a Haida Indian tale. Bear, created with the thickest fur, is uncomfortable under Sun's hot rays. He grabs the orb from the sky and hides it in a cave. A boy goes into Bear's cave, crops Bear's fur and leaves, sharing the shorn hair with the rest of the animal kingdom. Cold for the first time, Bear releases Sun. This well-developed retelling has a deft mix of the plausible and magical, which Oliviero (The Fish Skin, 1993, etc.) arranges around a generous core: No one has evil intent; all are simply seeking creature comfort. Each of new artist Hitchcock's highly stylized spreads are bracketed by totemic images; the pictures themselves are flat and sharply outlined, saturated with vibrant blues, greens, and yellows. These are dreamful, even transcendental, with an ancient, other-worldly feel--a vast, remote, sparsely populated landscape in which shape-shifting is possible. The whole work is unusually striking and compelling.