THE THREE BEGGAR KINGS

Karl's family is too poor to be visited by the workmen, costumed as the legendary Three Kings, who go singing and begging food and coins on the feast of the Epiphany (as was the custom in ""the smaller remote towns of Europe long ago"") -- but on one special night the boy finds himself touring with the trio and returning home with goodies, coins and the star-topped staff of the third king, ""the most royal and magnificent of all."" The story begins and ends with Karl's mother reading from the Bible about the original three kings in Bethlehem; what goes between has been told almost as often and almost always more eloquently. Kurt Werth slaps some splotchy mauve onto alternate pages of his black and white washes, which are so indifferently executed that even the artist seems bored with the undifferentiated cast. Shabby indeed.