THE GIANT FROM THE LITTLE ISLAND

In a roundabout fashion, a giant invents the Ferris wheel; the story, however, achieves nothing. For starters he's alone on a little island in the middle of the sea, inexplicably (indeed incomprehensibly) ""happy."" Then he's unhappy because waves swamp it and he has to sail away in his shipshape boat. (Figure that one out.) Ashore he takes up with a fisherman and catches more in a day than his host could in a week, but they have to give it up because the giant's giant (limitless?) appetite leaves none to sell. So it goes, waywardly, wordily, into a noisy, quarrelsome town where a little boy's wish to fly prompts (?) the building of the first Ferris wheel. The message about kindness and conciliation is in the nature of a pacifier, and the bright, characterless illustrations could come from any mid-European brush.