PATRICK AND THE FAIRY THIEF

This folktale lookalike wins no points for invention, but it's told in smooth rhythmic prose that will carry a read-aloud audience along. It's about Patrick, who lives in a mountain cottage with his widowed mother. . . until his mother goes off for wild blackberries and doesn't return. A year later, out picking heather for a broom, Patrick loses track of the ""little brown cow that my mother gave me."" He finds her in the hands of a Ganconer, ""a smooth-talking, crafty-eyed, trouble-making fairy man,"" who won't let go. The Ganconer rages, offers gold, and then urges Patrick to dance with the fairies who now surround him with their seductive enchantment. But despite the dancing feet and the persuasive music howling and swirling about him, Patrick holds on to the cow--and so not only saves the cow but also breaks the fairies' spell on his mother. (She, we learn, had been less resistant than her son when the fairies lured her into their dance a year back.)