A diverting but ultimately unsatisfying pseudo-folk tale, about a boy named George who leaves his uncle's home to become a woodcutter in the forest because the other children exclude him from their moonlight dances and tease him about the mole that covers his cheek. After George dances one night in a clearing for a troup of clumsy goblins, the creatures are so impressed with his performance that they take his mole (""the only good-looking thing about him"") as security to ensure that he will return to them. The village children then accept the de-blemished George in their dances, but he continues to live in the forest -- ""I can be a woodcutter and a dancer,"" George concludes rather lamely. ""Nothing has to change."" Hirsh's lumpy green goblins are acceptably but never awesomely grotesque, and the resolution they occasion, however ingenious, is disappointing.