The Blue Boy

With the look of a comic book, this book, originally published in Germany, seems overtly derivative of The Little Prince. Even the illustrations portray its protagonist as similar to Saint- Exupery's: a mop of yellow-gold hair, a doublet-like jacket with a high collar. But here the moral is not deduced from the story--the moral leads the story. The blue boy, from a faraway planet not unlike Earth, lacks the Little Prince's sense of wonder, ingenuousness and love. His own parents have recently been killed in a global war and he doesn't ``want to care about anyone, ever again.'' After he rejects the friendship of a dog, an old woman and a girl, and builds a huge, destructive robot, he leaves his planet in despair to ask the old man on the moon why people wage war. Answer: ``Because they don't know anything about each other.'' The blue boy is convinced, but he remains on the moon, peering at his people through a telescope instead of returning to help them. Politically correct, perhaps, but definitely ham-handed. Ages 7-up. (Sept.)