The Wishing Table

A portly tailor entrusts the care of his goat to his three sons and believes the creature when it complains of ill-treatment. The three sons are wrongly cast from the house and go off to find work. One son is apprenticed to a joiner, another to a miller and the third to a turner, and each receives a lucky charm at the finish of his work. These charmsa donkey that spits gold, a table that sets itself wtih food and a cudgel that attacks on commandare the envy of a greedy innkeeper who plots to steal them. Tharlet's rumpled, button-faced people, rendered against backgrounds of brown, rust and gray, carry out the slapstick-style humor found in the story; bird's-eye perspectives of the village charmingly capture all the action. All ages. (June)