I, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

As the title suggests, Weil's mini-biography in picture-book format is written in the first person--and that proves an accurate tip-off to its difference from Jean Fritz' Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus? (1980). Weil's Columbus tells of the charges of poor leadership in the colonies he established but more-or-less attributes the trouble to developments that occurred in his absence and beyond his control; and Weil still casts Columbus' belief in a round earth as an achievement of independent thinking, though Fritz lets her readers know that ""most people"" of his time agreed the world was round. Well's black ink sketches, though, are light and humorous, and fresher than her concept of Columbus. The narrative style is also pleasantly informal (""After seven years, maybe just to get rid of me, Queen Isabella let me have three small ships""), and the first-person viewpoint is, admittedly, a neat way to allow America's first non-native hero the sympathy that many adults still deem proper.