Square Beak

Shunned by other chicks, Square Beak explores and dreams of the day's venues--activities that cause her to lay rainbow-hued eggs reflective of the landscapes she has seen. This exotic ability boosts her popularity for a while, until she agrees to represent the others in an egg-laying contest, finds that the confinement it entails curbs her creative powers, and ceases to cooperate, returning to her solitary but satisfying wanderings. Children may rightly be bemused by this odd tale and by its billing as a ``fable of the modern artist,'' for the message concerning creativity and individuality is at once heavy-handed and fuzzy-minded. Here, artistry seems to involve no conscious effort beyond exposing oneself to beautiful sights--and the vehicle for its conveyance seems arbitrary. Chen's illustrations--eccentric pastels in which the chicks are only roughly representational, except for their jarringly human eyes--are sometimes hard to key to the story or even to interpret, but they do evoke mood and stir the imagination a bit more successfully than the text. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)