THE WICKED WIZARD AND THE WICKED WITCH

A comic style wizard clad in violet competes in rhyme from every left-hand page with a witch in smudgy black who comes on from the right. ""'I am wickeder,' wailed the witch/'Feezles, beezles, creezles, teezles!/Allacazam!/You've got the measles!'"" -- and though the contest escalates in frenzy it grows no more imaginative. After a cloudy purple climax in which ""A radiator aliigator elevator rose,/and a purple goat/sank in a boat/when her toe/became her nose,"" the rival agree to call it a draw, and we leave them cleaning up a mess that need never have been made in the first place. Disappointingly commonplace, though no worse than the witching season's average and snappier looking than most.