Seven Fathers

Young (Hook) and British storyteller Ramsden, in his first book for children, bring humor and light to an eerie Scandinavian folktale. Alone in a blizzard and desperate for shelter, a traveler stumbles upon a house and seeks the head of the household to ask for a night's lodging. But each old man the traveler finds sends him on a search for another: "I'm not the father of this house. You'll have to ask my father." Each old man is more wizened than the one before (one is "so small, so shrunken, he was no bigger than a baby!"), but once the traveler finds the seventh father, a spell is broken, and the man is transported to a dining room where he is fed a feast and put to bed. The story brims with eccentric charms, whether in the dashes of suspense and levity that lace Ramsden's prose or in Young's collages, which combine unexpected photo elements with freely outlined figures (the "magnificent drinking horn" that holds the final father is decorated with satellite imagery of suburban tract housing). It's Scandinavian magical realism, handsomely realized. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)