Sansablatt Head is a blast, exploding all over the page in the shape of richly textured characters, plot, and landscape. Imagine a King-Sansablatt-trapped in his own giant wooden head. Imagine his Queen- to-Be Claudine. She loves him so much she almost kills him (an axe to that head is just what he needs to be free, she thinks). And don't forget Eugenia (who stops this disaster before it starts), an outrageous Big Mama General who rules with an iron hand (and a smart one). She insists that Claudine's short cut cannot dispel the spell that keeps the King from attaining his true height and claiming his Kingdom, that only the long cut can-the intricate route through dangerous woods (described with a T for terror) to the top of a mountain where inside a cave, but I'm treading on dangerous ground here myself because I don't want to give away anything about this marvelous journey and its surprising adventures. That's for me to remember with pleasure and for you to find pleasure in yourself. But I can tell you one thing: Imagine first and last, longest and hardest about the main character-Alec-who doesn't have a friend on earth except Sansablatt, the Head: a lucky friendship for an unlucky boy because it carries him out of our world (where he's always been out-of-place) into a parallel one called Quelle where, from the moment he and the Head flip down into it by way of a mud pit, he slowly discovers what it means and what it takes to become part of the right place at the right time. Wouldn't we all like to learn that lesson? Well, you will, and have a lot of fun on the way, when you accompany Alec all the way from the first to last page of Sansablatt Head, a fantastic fantasy written by Joan Spilman. Llewellyn McKernan