THE LAND OF GRAY WOLF

Again, Locker has skillfully painted a series of landscapes in the manner of the Hudson River masters, then added some wooden figures plus a contrived story reflecting a social conscience: in this case, a lightly fictionalized account of white men stealing land from Indians who knew how to value it as they found it. Characters are introduced but not developed. The Indians go to a reservation, the interlopers build farms; then the book dwindles away with the partial return of the wilderness. Not actively bad, but lifeless and annoyingly pretentious. (Picture book. 4-8)