Once Upon Another Time

The Numblers and Puzzlers team is back with a challenging new work: a book that, when turned upside down, tells two stories. The familiar fables of ``The Tortoise and the Hare'' and ``The Lion and the Mouse'' are retold here without much alteration. What makes the book unusual is that its art does double duty: one set of images illustrates both stories. Abstract forms--circles, stripes and vague masses--represent characters and action. However, the torn-paper collages, while visually striking, are not entirely successful as complements to the text, and do not do much to move the stories along. Patience and imagination are not always rewarded here, where a purple shape denotes both the mouse and the tortoise and a yellow-orange one signifies the lion and the hare. This is an interesting idea that seems to have lost something in the execution. Ages 5-up. (Sept.)