THE MAGIC WEAVER OF RUGS

A second Navajo myth from the team that collaborated on How the Stars Fell into the Sky (1992). The unsourced tale tells how two women, concerned for their cold and hungry people since ``Even when winter had come and gone, it stayed winter in their hearts because the white wolf of fear crept among them,'' encounter Spider Woman, who pulls them into her land near the sky, makes a giant loom, and shows them how to prepare wool, gather colors from all creation, and weave with reverence as well as skill (``Weave with your very souls and be sure to bind each end of the rug carefully''). Testy and imperious, Spider Woman isn't patient with their questions, so even when the lesson is complete the women don't understand, at first, what they have learned. Powerful and pleasingly enigmatic in Oughton's lyrical, compact retelling, the tale is well served by Desimini's handsomely designed illustrations featuring biomorphic forms—the land itself seems as organic as the human figures—and the glowering rusts and blues that are becoming her trademark. (Folklore/Picture book. 5-10)