SHADOW STORY

From Willard (The Tale I Told Sasha, p. 539, etc.) and Diaz (Margaret Wise Brown’s The Little Scarecrow Boy, 1998, etc.), the story of how orphaned Holly Go Lolly, with her nimble fingers and quick thinking, gets the best of the wicked Ooboo. Gifted with the ability to create animals, scenery, and people by manipulating her hands to make magical shadows, she tricks the evil ogre by appealing to his voracious appetite. Diaz based the drawings for the Ooboo on a character from a 19th-century French play. Reminiscent of Sumatran shadow puppets, his whimsically surrealistic illustrations are the highlight for a story that, for all the special effects, is a conventional tale of brain beating brawn. (Picture book. 5-10)