WALLPAPER FROM SPACE

Steve sulks when his mom redecorates the house, but cheers up when he gets to pick out wallpaper with spaceships for his room. That night he is drawn into one of the spaceships, where he finds he has become a mouse and, along with the rest of the spacemouse crew, goes on a search for gumballs on an alien planet. As is true of many dreams, this story makes little sense: Once in space, Steve and the mice have few space-like adventures and, instead, boat down a river, do some mountain-climbing, and fit in a toboggan ride, all depicted in comic illustrations that are also fairly devoid of space motifs. Pinkwater (Doodle Flute, 1991, etc.), who relies on his readers to ``get'' him or not, remains unusually ungraspable this time out: no adventure, no characterizations, no motivation for plot spins, and no humor to float it when all else fails. (Fiction. 6-9)