THE BURIED MOON AND OTHER STORIES

In a sequel of sorts to The Goblins' Giggles (1973), Bang retells five stories from four different cultures, beginning with "The Wolf In Disguise," which she identifies as "an amalgam of the Grimm Wolf and the Seven Kids and a Japanese version of the same tale." The title story from England, in which "the folk" free the moon from tangled branches, resembles others which have been told with more humor, and another English tale, about heedless William who marries the princess and his brother Jack who saves William's life and takes an enchanted milk-white deer for his own wife, is a similarly unexciting combination of familiar elements. From China comes a brief, inconsequential joke tale called "The Mad Priest," and from India, more seriously, the virtuous Savitri who retrieves her husband from the lord of the dead. With redundantly literal illustrations and no unifying theme, it's as unexceptional as it is inoffensive.