The title will prompt readers to open this book's cover, but newcomer Kompaneyets's sparkling story will reel them in. Part Gulliver's Travels
, part wise-fool yarn, this tale set in a nameless northern European town (depicted in scenes on sepia pages with trompe-l'oeil borders) stars Hieronymus, an eccentric scholar who sets out to discover the one thing he does not know: the source of "a single little hair" that appears on his desk one day. The thin, bearded, high-strung fellow has devoted his career to exhaustive research of the physical universe, albeit of a nonsensical sort. He understands "the crunchy-squishiness of bugs," the "saltiness of ink" and the "bounciness of sausage." Kompaneyets sets up a terrific irony between the scholar's silly pursuits and the seriousness of the artwork. In a parody of Vermeer, Hieronymus stands in the tranquil light of a window, his sausages ready to be thrown in one hand, his bounciness-measuring ruler in the other. The hero searches for that single hair's source, traveling to the lands of the raucous Bobnatabobs, the idiot Pabnayabish and the fearful Yabodabos ("The creative genius to my right developed spitting," explains a pompous Pabnayabish, "and the one to my left discovered a way to say things that are not true in a way that makes it seem that they are"). The tale takes the form of a classic parable, as the search ends in Hieronymus's own backyard ("For all my knowledge of things great and small, how truly little do I know myself!"). Don't miss this one. Ages 6-9. (June)
