Gonna Roll the Bones
Grade 6 Up–Joe Slattermill is a gambling man who has an uncanny encounter with the Big Gambler in his town's new gaming parlor, The Boneyard. Leiber's fantasy novelette, greatly reduced and lightened in this picture-book adaptation, won the 1967 Nebula Award and the 1968 Hugo Award. Wiesner's sometimes smudgy pencil drawings on browned acrylic have the faded look of very long ago, though the text notes that "Far in the distance, Joe could see a faint glow of gas flares and blue lights and neon pink tubes, all jeering at the stars where the spaceships flew." Joe's attempt to out-gamble the Grim Reaper-type figure is both spooky and somewhat predictable. He loses his soul in a wager with the Big Gambler, and after a final physical skirmish, the skeletal figure crumbles and all turns to dust as though it had been but a dream. Yet, there's an intentionally nebulous and open-ended conclusion. The somber pictures sometimes have suggestive shapes and details, mixing light and dark, indistinct areas contrasting with more clearly drawn figures. The bleak look suits the darker tone of Leiber's original text. Sometimes the pictures contradict details mentioned in the text. The book may find an audience with older reluctant readers, and it could serve as an introduction to the longer fantasy works of Leiber. Larger collections will want it as a very different work by Wiesner.–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, BostonCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.