THE TWENTY-FIVE MIXTEC CATS

Mexican artist Martinez terms his style ``figurative magic''; with its vibrant, sinuously stylized figures and surreal overlapping scenes merging with borders containing still more expressive details, the term seems apt for a visual analogue to literature's magical realism. But Gollub's tale (his first picture book), drawing on Oaxaca's folklore, is more problematic. When a ``good healer'' imports 25 cats into his arid village, he meets only suspicion—``It's hard enough just to feed our children...they'll set fire to our fields''—and his neighbors hire the ``evil healer'' to get rid of them. Taunted for her failure to do so, she casts a spell on the man who has insulted her; the good healer, though, makes him well with the cats' help. Just how these symbolic figures and events explicate the interaction of poverty, prejudice, and evil remains enigmatic (a note would have helped); still, Martinez makes an intriguing debut with his powerful art. (Picture book. 4-10)