The Warlord's Puzzle

This tale of the origin of the Chinese tangram grew out of Pilegard's thesis project for her M.A. in education. When an artist bestows his gift of a blue tile on a warlord, he drops it, breaking it into seven pieces (""a parallelogram, a square, and five triangles""). As the warlord prepares to mete out ""my worst punishment,"" the artist postpones his fate by suggesting a contest. The warlord proclaims that whoever puts the tile back together will receive a treasure and come to live in the palace. People eager to try their skill soon line the road to the palace gate; where wise men fail, a poor peasant's son quietly completes the puzzle. Pilegard punctuates her prose with colorful description (e.g., the tile is ""the rare blue of a winter sky when dark storm clouds part""), but the boy's solution is anticlimactic, requiring little deductive reasoning (""He put the two large triangles together. They looked like his father's hat""). The strength of Debon's (The Moon Festival) paintings lies in the details of clothing, landscape and architecture. Unfortunately, his characterizations rely on stereotype: the tile artist comes off as a stooge, a monk as a smiley-faced goon. Though the appeal is primarily for adults, young puzzlers may enjoy the traceable tangram pattern at book's end--but likely won't be back for repeated readings. Ages 4-8. (Apr.)