THE THREE VISITORS

Kindness creates...is...magic in Nuka Cham's igloo where, Just before the long winter's night, just after Great-grandmother goes out to buy oil, three visitors come seeking help. Old Aunt, dozing in the corner, would turn them out--""Each bone must hold its own marrow, I say""--but the little girl does as her Great-grandmother would have done. The Pelican thanks her with a gift which cures the seal's wound, the seal thanks her with a gift which speeds the baby polar bear home, and the seed left over from the Pelican's gift warms the hut and makes it glow so that Great-grandmother can find her way in the storm. Mrs. Rockwell's flat frieze illustrations, incised with whalebone precision and colored with subtlety and variety, evoke the details of precarious domesticity inside the igloo and the vast rhythmic sweep of ice and sea and skywithout. They make this more than just another--make it immediate and memorable.