ACROSS THE SEA

Five vignettes, one ("Sophie's Picnic") as unassuming and satisfying as Sleepy People (1966), one offbeat, straight-faced funny ("The Mill"), two that relate to adult responses although the imagery's nice, and one overlong love fest culminating in a one-line joke. The little drawings are appropriately terse and the author/artist is trying again to scale words, narrative, format to small children. Where it works, it works well.