Word: allsburgs
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Pastels and magic are the main components of The Wreck of the Zephyr, written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg (Houghton Mifflin; $14.95). A small sailboat sits wrecked at the edge of a cliff. How did it get up there? An old salt describes the journey to a place where boats glide above the water like seagulls. Van Allsburg's dark, hypnotic illustrations follow the craft through massed clouds and starry evenings, until it crashes to earth with the surprise of a joke and the power of a folk tale...
...purchase a set of combs. Lisbeth Zwerger's biting line and soft, evocative palette illuminate the characters with an aura of a gaslit nobility, and burnish an antique until it shines. With two previous books, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi and last year's Jumanji, Chris Van Allsburg has become the reigning master of black-and-white illustration. In his third work, Ben's Dream (Houghton Mifflin; $8.95), the pictorial style far outdistances the story. Ben falls asleep and abruptly finds himself awash in a second flood. Only the tops of things show: the head and shoulders...
...garden, owned by an ominous wizard in a fez. Nothing is quite the same, not even his pet. The fat man's hobby: turning pet dogs into ducks. Long after the spell ends, an eerie residue remains, like a dream that persists in the waking world. Chris Van Allsburg's narrative leans too hard on pictures of topiary animals and foreboding dwellings, but his brilliant illustrations resemble snapshots taken by the brain...