THE ELEVEN STEPS
By
Lucy Freeman has written a number of books of popular psychology and that's what this is too -- faithful enough to everyday life and healthy enough for other antagonized siblings, but totally unstimulating to the imagination. It's about Jimmy's unhappiness when his adored older sister Mary, who has brought a new friend home to see her stamp album, shouts Jimmy out of her room. . .about the guilt he feels after he dreams of throwing the album down the stairs and into a bottomless hole. . .his apprehension next day when Mary can't find the album, and then his joy when it turns up and Mary -- to make amends -- invites him to a meeting of her stamp club. Too slight to stand alone, the story nevertheless seems unsuited to a picture book format, and certainly Brinckloe's flatly realistic, colorless drawings (solid aqua with black line on white) do nothing to dispel the utilitarian aura.