THE DREAM FACTORY STARRING ANNA AND HENRY

Having flung their intrepid young characters through breakneck homages to Art (Anna’s Art Adventure, 1999) and Literature (The Story in Search of a Story, 1999), Sortland and Elling now plunge them into a whirl of scenes from classic cinema. As in the previous tales, it’s an allusive landscape that is traversed. Here, Max Schreck (“Nosferatu”) rears up next to a poster of Al Jolson in blackface; there, a breathless ride on Ben-Hur’s chariot is followed by encounters with Tarzan, King Kong, a soggy singer in the rain, and finally a sad old man who persuades Anna and Henry to trade their newest Christmas present, a sled (“Rosebud”), for a snow globe. The references are identified and described at the end, but not in enough detail to spark much interest in child readers, who will most likely be familiar only with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and, perhaps, the original King Kong, certainly not The Seven Samurai or Potemkin. Older film buffs will recognize both scenes and stars, even though Elling’s dark, indistinct figures tend toward caricature. Like the previous tours, this is more about name-dropping than real appreciation. (Picture book. 7-9)