THE SEVEN VOYAGES OF SINBAD THE SAILOR

A splendiferous new presentation of an ageless yarn, replete with disasters, exotic lands, sumptuous palaces, fortunes lost and won back, and horrible monsters: ``We saw . . . a giant-like creature . . . his lower lip hung down like a camel's over his chest, his ears flopped over his shoulders like an elephant's, and his fingernails were like a lion's claws. I nearly passed out at the sight of him.'' Once Yeoman (also with Blake, The Singing Tortoise, 1994, etc.), through Sinbad, begins to weave his storyteller's spell, readers will want to plunge through right to the end (although a ribbon is bound into the book, should there be a need to mark a stopping point). The text has been edited for ease and fluency; the grandeur of older renditions has been preserved while long speeches and flowery rhetoric have been cut down. In a plethora of full-color and black-and-white watercolor wash illustrations that range from elaborate full-page compositions to tiny, almost abstract scribbles, Blake places gesticulating figures into situations that seem more exciting than dangerous. A fine design with a generous use of white space gives this volume the look and feel of the classic it is. (Folklore. 10-14)