A SMALL TALL TALE FROM THE FAR FAR NORTH

In an intriguing global verso to his Follow the Dream (1991), S°s embroiders on an autobiographical tall tale, remembered by Jan Welzl (1868-1951) from his youth in Czechoslovakia. Welzl was a locksmith who escaped Eastern Europe to cross Siberia and make a life with the Eskimos. Shipwrecked off California in 1924, he was deported to Moravia, where he wrote several books that weren't always believed; there's a gravestone bearing his name in the Yukon. As S°s did in the book about Columbus, he supplies a simple text and contrasts intricate spreads incorporating Europe's confining walls and old maps with the broad expanses to which his hero escapes, while Welzl's adventures are depicted in series of tiny vignettes and other imaginative conformations. There's a fantastical encounter with a magnetic golden mountain, later invoked to divert gold diggers from disturbing Welzl's friends the Eskimos, who have generously taken him in and taught him to survive. This denouement isn't developed much; but the unusual story and the extraordinary visual delights accompanying it are not to be missed. (Picture book. 5-10)