THE MATTER WITH LUCY

Playing to both the campy nostalgia for vintage Sears Roebuck catalogs and the current anti-sexist imperative, Grifalconi has compiled an "album" from the ads and illustrations of "unknown artists of the nineteenth century," tying the pictures together with the quaint, occasionally rhyming tale of paragon Lucy who is always busy mending and cooking and scrubbing (and even waxing skis) for her seven brothers ("Her care for her brothers was constant,/ Her concern for their comforts so great. . . . And, what was amazing in Lucy,/ She never, ever would fuss!") but who nevertheless has a "passion for questions" which she indulges, contrary to family expectations, by going to school and becoming a "world famous scholar." The illustrations seem inspired by that Slightly Irregular put-on of a couple of years back, the text geared to those who feel more comfortable with some semi-straight matter worked in.