Rimonah of the Flashing Sword: A North African Tale

Snow White meets Ali Baba in this adaptation of a North African fairy tale. The heroine, Rimonah (the name means ``pomegranate''), has skin as dark as a pomegranate, eyes bright as pomegranate seeds and a voice sweet as pomegranate juice. Her fate is much like Snow White's, except that she finds refuge with bedouins, not dwarves, and learns from them how to handle a sword. Forced to flee a second time, she seeks asylum in a den of 40 thieves before a final showdown with her evil stepmother. Kimmel's writing is fluid as ever, but the design of this book is decidedly off-putting. Set in a clunky font, blocks of text, one or two per page, seemed crammed on top of the illustrations, themselves very busy. The sand-colored borders further compete for the reader's attention. Heavily overdone. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)