SEVEN LITTLE MONSTERS

Seven little monsters, in guises and postures you'll recognize from previous Sendak works, are resisted (and, at last, routed) by a nursery-rhyme village of much smaller and even more casually sketched figures—in six little pages that you might take for one of those slightly extended greeting cards. Perhaps it's Sendak's way of demonstrating that even with both hands behind his back and his attention elsewhere he's more inventive than the likes of Gackenbach and Schertle (above)—but such indifferent efforts from the king of all wild things are all the more disappointing.