A BOOK FOR WOODY

Woody, a young pig in need of reading material for the trip home from his grandparents', sits down in front of a shelf with six books. Each book jumps out to convince him that it is ``the only one worth reading.'' Each one has a different content to offer: a moralistic tale, an adventure story, a funny book, a math book, a realist novel. The last book, entitled ``A Book for Woody,'' turns out to be the very book readers are holding. In this follow-up to Woody (1993), Heller's pictures of Woody and the talking books (black pen outlines, filed in with bright watercolors) are colorful, if somewhat stiff. But by— successfully— making the story so self-referential and the action so abstract Heller puts his book in a genre of storytelling that is a little unconventional and self-conscious, and a lot avante-garde. (Picture book. 4+)