GRANDMOTHER TOLD ME

A small boy's visit to Grandmother occasions a switch on the usual imaginative child/literal-minded grownup pattern (and on his own There's a Nightmare in My Closet, 1968). Here whether it be a troll or mermaid in the garden, an alligator in the alley, a tattooed President, or ""the Flying Huntsman chasing a witch's head"" at the department store -- ""Grandmother saw them/ for she could see/ things that were never seen by me."" Finally at bedtime Grandmother promises strange visions after the light is off, ""And in the dark/Grandmother and I both saw/ that beautiful parade."" Mayer's black-and-white pictures, which continue to resemble early Sendak, mix the fantasy with nostalgia -- but as Wahl merely lists the objects of fantasy without really summoning them to life, it might take an unusually persuasive grandmother to pull off this bedtime hype.