The Strange Blue Creature

As Borovsky's slim yet droll tale opens, a blue streak swooshes to earth from another planet, landing with a crash. ``When the smoke cleared away, a strange blue creature appeared.'' Peering through a castle window, the ravenous, long-snouted beast spies a princess sharpening her crayons. In a flash, he flies through the glass and devours each crayon. The insatiable creature then follows some children to school, where he gobbles up every crayon he can find and eats ``the dust from the crayon sharpeners for dessert.'' When the king's soldiers fail to stop the greedy creature's rampage, the princess confronts him at the crayon factory and asks, ``Don't you know what crayons are for?'' To demonstrate, she draws a mural on the wall. The creature catches on in no time; thus a great artist is born. Borovsky's ( Nico ; George ) wry sense of humor adds some zip to the stark, pen-and-ink and gouache pictures that accompany this ultimately disappointing story. Ages 4-7. (Oct.)