THE THREE SILLIES

A genial rendering of the classic Joseph Jacobs' tale—with less suggestion of witlessness and less pictorial ingenuity, perhaps, than the Margot Zemach version (now o.p.), but probably more popular appeal. Galdone makes the foolishly despairing daughter ("Suppose my young man and I were to be married, and we were to have a son, and he was to grow up. . .") a pretty, beribboned, bubble-headed blonde; he depicts her horror-struck parents as Dickensian ninnies; and he gives her fiancÉ (who goes off in search of "three bigger sillies") the aspect of an amiable, indulgent young blade. In this mock-Victorian interpretation, the conclusion comes off particularly well—"So the young man went home and married his own dear silly"—and the two hearts set below, one grinning, one demure, reinforce the feeling that what we have is not so much a dimwit tale as a valentine.