THE LIGHT ACROSS PINEY VALLEY

The story has an illusory, dream-like quality. A boy sees a light in the distance and decides that it must be a golden crown, which he wants to get for his mother. He walks through the woods toward the light, and is trailed by a variety of animals, each with its own vision of what the light is. Eventually they find that it simply comes from a neighboring house, so they turn back to a light which they now see shining from the boy's own home. The frail thread of the story hardly manages to sustain the heavy mood. In color and design, the illustrations simulate the stylized designs of Mexican pottery. This technique is very effective in some of the pictures, but is offset in others by crowded, unbalanced compostion.